Stability of anisotropic electroactive polymers with application to layered media (Q657853)

An elastic dielectric body, mechanically and electrically loaded, undergoes finite deformations. In this context, the electrostatic quantities of interest are properly ``pulled-back'' in the reference configuration of the dielectric body, through the deformation gradient. Here, the case of a homogeneous plain-strain deformation of an incompressible layered composite is examined in detail, and a stability criterion is established. Due to the introduced constitutive assumptions, the actual electric field and the actual electric displacement turn out to be proportional to one another, through the dielectric constant \(\epsilon\), which has two different values in the layers and in the bulk, respectively. The anisotropic behavior of the dielectric body stems from the averaging treatment of material properties in the composite. As expected, the presence of the electrostatic quantities alters the equilibrium and the stability conditions compared to the purely mechanical problem. A few diagrams exhibit instability regions for various directions of the layers and for various directions and values of the ``referential'' electric displacement.