Measurement Of Insulating And Dielectric Properties Of Acrylic Elastomer Membranes At High Electric Fields

This work reports on the investigation of VHB 4910 acrylic elastomer insulating and dielectric properties. This material is widely exploited for the realization of actuators with large deformations, dielectric elastomer actuators (DEA), and belongs to the group of so-called electroactive polymers (EAP). Extensive investigations concerning its mechanical properties are available in literature while its electric behavior at working conditions has not received the same level of attention. In this work, the relative permittivity and the volume resistivity have been measured on VHB 4910 membranes under different fixed stretch conditions (lambda(1), lambda(2) = 3, 3.6, 4, 5) using circular gold electrodes sputtered onto both sides of the specimens. The measured values of relative permittivity are in fairly good agreement with the results previously published by other groups. The volume resistivity, at field values close to the operational ones, has shown a field-dependent behavior revealing dissipative properties that should be considered in real applications. Further, measurements on circular actuators verify these findings. Consequences for modeling of VHB 4910 are drawn and new material model parameters proposed to account for the value of relative permittivity at high electric fields. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3676201]