Balancing energy conversion and long-term reliability of dielectric elastomer generators

Abstract

Dielectric elastomer generators (DEG) are soft transducers capable of converting mechanical energy into electrostatic energy. Increasing the mechanical stretch amplitude and the electric field imposed to the DEG leads to higher energy conversion on one hand, but at the cost of a reduced lifetime on the other hand. Here, mechanical fatigue and electrical limits are assessed on a silicone-based DEG and the outcome is used into an electro-mechanical reliability model. The operating parameters (stretch amplitude and electric field) which maximize the energy conversion are obtained from a multi-dimensional optimization approach which gives the best compromise between energetic cycles and long-term reliability. Energy densities reported in the literature are often obtained by pushing the DEG on the knife-edge of their intrinsic capabilities for a limited number of cycles . In contrast, our analysis presents more realistic values in the endurance domain, leading to a substantial reduction of the practical performance that can be achieved.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Thomas Andritsch: orcid.org/0000-0002-3462-022X

ORCID for Istebreq A. Saeedi: orcid.org/0000-0002-1254-748X

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