Continuum thermo-electro-mechanical model for electrostrictive elastomers

Abstract

This article presents a finite-deformation fully-coupled thermo-electro-elastic continuum model that is suited for the analysis, design, and control of solid-state transduction devices based on electrostrictive elastomers. In the model, electrostrictive elastomers are considered as isotropic modified-entropic hyperelastic dielectrics that deform in response to a simultaneous combination of electrical, thermal, and mechanical stimuli. The model is thermodynamically consistent and comprises general balance equations, which do not require the postulation of any force or stress tensor of electrical origin, together with phenomenological invariant-based constitutive relations, which necessitate the minimum number of material parameters to be determined via experimental tests only. Comparison with existing theories and experimental results are provided that validate the proposed thermo-electro-elastic model.