title: Catastrophic Thinning of Dielectric Elastomers.
abstract: We provide an energetic insight into the catastrophic nature of thinning instability in soft electroactive elastomers. This phenomenon is a major obstacle to the development of giant actuators, yet it is neither completely understood nor modeled accurately. In excellent agreement with experiments, we give a simple formula to predict the critical voltages for instability patterns; we model their shape and show that reversible (elastic) equilibrium is impossible beyond their onset. Our derivation is fully analytical, does not require finite element simulations, and can be extended to include prestretch and various material models.
authors.affiliation: School of Mathematics, Statistics and Applied Mathematics, NUI Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zurlo
authors.affiliation: School of Mathematics, Statistics and Applied Mathematics, NUI Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Destrade
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze dell' Ingegneria Civile e dell' Architettura, Politecnico di Bari, Via Re David 200, 70125 Bari, Italy.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: DeTommasi
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze dell' Ingegneria Civile e dell' Architettura, Politecnico di Bari, Via Re David 200, 70125 Bari, Italy.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Puglisi