Research On Actuation Characteristics Of Flexible Actuators Made Of DE

As the development of Smart ammunition, the controlling function of the fuze is also expanding. In some cases, the safety system of the fuze is no longer a one-way operation, which is to say the state of fuze can just change form safe position to arming condition, but can be recovered to a safe state. Therefore, we need to use the recoverable type structure to replace the original pushing and puling pins structures. The traditional motor drive mode can not meet the conditions since the traditional structure is complex with large volume and large power consumption. The actuators based on DE have high strain, high energy density, high energy conversion efficiency, fast response. And the structure is simple with light weight, low cost, easy processing and manufacturing which can be designed into a variety of shapes to achieve flexible drive and so on. However, due to the material research is not yet mature, the designing of the actuators is always going by testing large numbers of the actors. This kind of designing work will bring a lot of uncertainty.In this paper, the mechanical properties of the material are analyzed by testing VHB4910. The material parameters of the Prony viscoelastic model and the Yeoh strain energy model are given. The law of mechano-electric transducing is found from the experimental test of the circular drive. Based on the theory of membrane wrinkling, the failure criterion of the film is analyzed.On the basis of analyzing the characteristics of the material, a cylindrical actuator is designed, and the driving characteristics of this type of actuator are analyzed. By theoretical and numerical calculation, the law of the change of the driving displacement caused by the change of the pre-draft ratio and the stiffness of the spring is presented. In addition, the characteristics of the actuator when it is miniaturized in the size are analyzed, and the effects of the interaction between the layers are presented. The research in this paper lay the foundation of designing the dielectric EAP driver and applying this kind of actuators to the fuze system.