Development and experimental characterization of a dielectric elastomer membrane strip actuator

Abstract

Dielectric elastomer (DE) membrane actuators are of great interest for a number of industrial applications, such as valve control units or pumping systems. Their many features include lightweight, silent motion, and low energy consumption. In particular, the high flexibility permits to shape DE actuators with different geometries, allowing to obtain a wide set of actuation modes. This work aims at investigating and characterizing a novel configuration of DE membrane actuator, namely a strip DE membrane capable of out-of-plane motion. At first, manufacturing of pre-stretched strip membranes without electrodes is performed to study the influence of biaxial and uniaxial pre-stretch on the out-of-plane force-displacement characteristics. Subsequently, electrodes are screen-printed on the membranes, and the impact of their size on the force-displacement characteristics is studied. Evaluation of electro-mechanical transduction performance is performed experimentally. Finally, a performance comparison between novel strip actuators and circular actuators developed in the authors' previous works is performed, to highlight the advantages of the novel configuration.