Electrostatically tunable small-amplitude free vibrations of pressurized electro-active spherical balloons

Abstract: Designing tunable resonators is of practical importance in active/adaptive sound generation, noise control, vibration isolation and damping. In this paper, we propose to exploit the biasing fields (induced by internal pressure and radial electric voltage) to tune the three-dimensional and small-amplitude free vibration of a thick-walled soft electro-active (SEA) spherical balloon. The incompressible isotropic SEA balloon is characterized by both neo-Hookean and Gent ideal dielectric models. The equations governing small-amplitude vibrations under inhomogeneous biasing fields can be linearized and solved in spherical coordinates using the state-space formalism, which establishes two separate transfer relations correlating the state vectors at the inner surface with those at the outer surface of the SEA balloon. By imposing the mechanical and electric boundary conditions, two separate analytical frequency equations are derived, which characterize two independent classes of vibration for torsional and spheroidal modes, respectively. Numerical examples are finally conducted to validate the theoretical derivation as well as to investigate the effects of both radial electric voltage and internal pressure on the resonant frequency of the SEA balloon. The reported analytical solution is truly and fully three-dimensional, covering from the purely radial breathing mode to torsional mode to any general spheroidal mode, and hence provides a more accurate prediction of the vibration characteristics of tunable resonant devices that incorporate the SEA spherical balloon as the tuning element.