The Rayleigh-Lamb wave propagation in dielectric elastomer layers subjected to large deformations

The propagation of waves in soft dielectric elastomer layers is investigated. To this end incremental motions superimposed on homogeneous finite deformations induced by bias electric fields and pre-stretch are determined. First we examine the case of mechanically traction free layer, which is an extension of the Rayleigh-Lamb problem in the purely elastic case. Two other loading configurations are accounted for too. Subsequently, numerical examples for the dispersion relations are evaluated for a dielectric solid governed by an augmented neo-Hookean strain energy. It is found that the phase speeds and frequencies strongly depend on the electric excitation and pre-stretch. These findings lend themselves at the possibility of controlling the propagation velocity as well as filtering particular frequencies with suitable choices of the electric bias field. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.