Vibration study of dielectric elastomer conical structure based on fractional viscoelasticity

Abstract

Dielectric elastomer (DE) is intelligent soft material which is widely used in actuator and energy harvesting fields such as softs robots and wave energy harvesting. Viscoelasticity of DE is seldom investigated by the fractional derivative modeling which is more suited for describing the non-Newton fluid of viscosity. The fractional dynamical governing equation of a conical structure for energy harvesting is established, the dynamic behaviors such as vibration displacement and velocity, amplitude-frequency character, output voltage are all studied by theory and experiments. The fractional viscoelasticity modeling without electricity fits well with the experiments. Viscoelasticity decreases both the displacement and the velocity of the transit vibration in overall frequency region. However, for the stable vibration, the viscoelasticity reduces the amplitude in low and resonance regions, and it enhances the amplitude in high frequency region. The input voltage effects lightly both the static and dynamic amplitudes. The output voltage predicted by theory is agree with counterparts of the experiment to some extent. This research can give some information for design of the wave energy harvesting.