Towards modelling the curing process in particle-filled electro-active polymers

A large actuation voltage is required to produce a desired mechanical deformation in dielectric elastomers. To reduce the amount of the actuation voltage, several mechanisms can be applied and the inclusion of high dielectric permittivity fillers in the matrix material in the uncured stage is one of them. Moreover, to obtain a maximum advantage from the high dielectric permittivity fillers, an electric field is applied during the curing process which helps the particles to align in a preferred direction. The stiffness gaining during curing is modelled by an appropriate constitutive relation where the temporal evolution of the material parameters is considered. In this paper we present a phenomenologically-inspired large strain framework for simulating the curing process of polymers that can work under the use of an electro-mechanically coupled load. (© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)