Modeling and experimental study on dielectric elastomers incorporating humidity effect

¹ School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University - Xi'an 710072, China
² School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Polytechnic University - Xi'an 710048, China
³ School of Mechanical and Precision Instrument Engineering, Xi'an University of Technology - Xi'an 710048, China
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Strength and Vibration of Mechanical Structures, Xi'an Jiaotong University Xi'an 710049, China

^(a) yangzc@nwpu.edu.cn (corresponding author)

Received: 6 January 2020
Accepted: 17 March 2020

Abstract

In this research, we carry out a modeling and experimental study on the performance of a VHB 4910 elastomer considering the humidity effect. Firstly, based on the uniaxial tension test of VHB 4910, it is concluded that humidity leads to a reduction of the shear modulus. Subsequently, the static electromechanical performance of VHB 4910 is explored, which implies that voltage-induced deformation increases gradually with the increasing humidity. Finally, by applying a sinusoidal voltage, the humidity effect on the resonance properties of the VHB 4910 elastomer is found to decrease the resonant frequency and augment the vibration intensity.