Voltage-induced crumpling of a dielectric membrane

School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University - 28 Xianning West Road, Xi'an, 710049, China and State Key Laboratory for Strength and Vibration of Mechanical Structures, Xi'an Jiaotong University 28 Xianning West Road, Xi'an, 710049, China

^(a) liboxjtu@xjtu.edu.cn (corresponding author)

Received: 23 November 2015
Accepted: 11 December 2015

Abstract

An elastic membrane crumples under a lateral compressive force, forming irregular folds in the surface. In this work we reported a dielectric membrane that was crumpled by voltage in experiments. As the voltage ramps up, the boundary stress that used to tauten the membrane, reduces to zero, causing the membrane to experience loss of tension and then to crumple. A theoretical analysis is developed and discussed, resulting in an effective evaluation for the onset of crumpling instability and its harnessing.