Charge-controlled electromechanical instability modeling of a dielectric plate actuator

This paper presents the electromechanical instability modeling of a dielectric elastomeric (DE) material-based plate actuator subjected to an electrical voltage with bi-axial pulling. An analytical model is developed to predict the critical charge-controlled actuation response of the plate actuator for an applied electromechanical loading condition. To develop the same, the first law of thermodynamics-based continuum mechanics approach is adopted. Furthermore, the actual deformation-dependent dielectric permittivity effect on the actuation response of the actuator is also investigated. In general, the developed model will be helpful to the researchers in designing the different DE material-based plate actuators for various soft robotic applications.