Electro-sensitive (ES) elastomers are a class of smart materials whose mechanical properties change instantly on the application of an electric field. These elastomers, which are endowed with electric properties by the embedding of uniformly dispersed micron-sized ferrous particles, have attracted considerable interest recently because of their potential for providing relative simple and quiet variable-stiffness devices for use as rapid-response interfaces between electronic controls and mechanical systems. Here we confine attention to the static situation and summarize the equilibrium equations for a solid material capable of large electroelastic deformations. The general constitutive law that gives the Cauchy stress for an isotropic material in the presence of an electric field is described and expressed in a compact form, with the deformation gradient and the electric field as the independent variables. The equations are applied, in the case of an incompressible material, to the solution of a representative boundary-value problem.
展开▼
