Electroadhesive dielectric elastomer actuator for vibration excitation of mechanical structure

This study proposes a vibration excitation technique that employs an electroadhesive dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA). The DEA, which is a soft actuator comprising an electroactive polymer, has high flexibility, stretchability, and fast response. In vibration experiments aimed at conducting vibration excitation for flexible mechanical structures, the DEA is conventionally attached to a mechanical structure using adhesives. However, DEAs with adhesives have the disadvantage of low reusability owing to a degradation of stickiness as DEAs are repeatedly applied to vibration experiments for many objects. Furthermore, such a DEA can be damaged when being detached from objects. This study combines the electroadhesion technique with the DEA to remove the adhesives. Electroadhesion can generate an adhesive force between electrode-applied voltages and the object to be attached. In this study, the proposed electroadhesive DEA (EA-DEA) is fabricated by stacking elastomers and two different shapes of electrodes. Then, the EA-DEA can generate both a vibration excitation force and an adhesive force based on electroadhesion. Numerical simulations are performed to estimate the adhesive force. Subsequently, vibration experiments using the proposed EA-DEA are conducted. To demonstrate the fundamental effectiveness of the proposed technique, simple cantilever beams made of steel or acrylic material are selected as objects to be excited for the vibration experiment. In addition, the effect of vibration excitation of the proposed EA-DEA is compared with that of an ordinary adhesive DEA. The results obtained confirmed the effectiveness of the vibration excitation technique using the proposed EA-DEA. • Electroadhesive DEA (EA-DEA) was applied to vibration experiments. • Two different shapes of electrodes were applied to compose the EA-DEA. • Numerical simulation was performed to estimate an adhesive force of the EA-DEA. • EA-DEA attached to acrylic or steel cantilever beams owing to electroadhesion. • Distinct frequency responses were obtained based on the experiments with EA-DEA.