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Fabrication Process of Silicone-based Dielectric Elastomer Actuators
Published on: February 1, 2016
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Tensile Modeling PVC Gels for Electrohydraulic Actuators
John Albert Faccinto1, Jongcheol Lee1, Kwang J Kim1
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154, USA.
Polymers
|October 16, 2025
Summary
Polyvinyl chloride (PVC)-dibutyl adipate (DBA) gels show tunable mechanical properties for soft robotics. Increasing plasticizer content reduces elastic modulus and Poisson
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Polymer Science
- Robotics Engineering
Background:
- Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) are crucial for soft robotics.
- Polyvinyl chloride (PVC)-dibutyl adipate (DBA) gels are promising DEAs.
- Understanding their constitutive relationships is vital for actuator design.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the elastic and hyperelastic behavior of PVC-DBA gels under tensile loading.
- To determine how plasticizer content affects the mechanical properties of PVC gels.
- To establish a constitutive model for PVC-DBA gels in soft robotics applications.
Main Methods:
- Synthesized PVC-DBA gels with varying plasticizer-to-polymer ratios (2:1 to 8:1 w/w).
- Conducted tensile tests to measure elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio.
- Evaluated hyperelastic constitutive models including Neo-Hookean, Mooney-Rivlin, Yeoh, Gent, Ogden, and extended tube models.
Main Results:
- PVC gels exhibit linear elasticity up to 25% strain.
- Elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio decrease with increasing plasticizer content.
- The Yeoh hyperelastic model demonstrated the highest feasibility for modeling up to 3.5 stretch.
Conclusions:
- PVC-DBA gels possess tunable mechanical properties influenced by plasticizer concentration.
- The findings provide a constitutive basis for designing PVC-DBA based actuators.
- Network structure analysis offers insights for accurate modeling of dielectric elastomer actuators.
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