Integrated Design of Actuation and Mechanism of Dielectric Elastomers Using Topology Optimization Based on Fat Bezier Curves

Soft actuation technology has attracted considerable interest in recent decades, with the light weight, high response speed, and large deformation of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) showing particular promise. DEAs composed of compliant frames and prestrained dielectric elastomers (DEs) can be considered as a soft actuation system, which is termed minimum-energy structure. Most existing DEAs come from a well-known design with a simple configuration but complex design process. In this article, we propose an integrated design method for the actuation and mechanism of DEs based on topology optimization using fat Bezier curves. In this method, the compliant frame is represented by fat Bezier curves, and the prestrained DE is distributed in the region bounded by the curves. This article first describes the theoretical modeling process, and then presents three design examples that validate the optimization algorithm. Finite element analysis (FEA) and experiments are conducted to assess the performance of the optimized configurations. The FEA simulations and experimental results show that the topology optimization algorithm results in DEAs that exhibit the desired motion.