Generalized electromechanical stability of dielectric elastomers

Abstract: We investigate the ture electromechanical stability of dielectric elastomer actuators by considering the competition between Maxwell and mechanical stresses. Existing researches based on the positive defiiteness of the nominal Hessian matrix addressed only the initial load routie stability, i.e., Born stability, in the absence of prestresses. We generalize this method to account for electromechanical stability at any prestress state. For large enough prestresses, we demonstatre that the previous method for Born stability may lead to predcitions that deviate considerably from the true results. The true method for electromechanical stablity can help the factual design of actuators constructed from dielectric elastomers.