Dissipation Factor of Acrylic Dielectric Elastomer-An Experimental Study

This paper studies the effects of frequency, pre-strain and electrode types on the dielectric property of a commercially available and most widely used acrylic elastomer, VHB 4910. The acrylic VHB film is pre-stretched in biaxial directions with the help of an in-house developed biaxial stretching device. The stretched film has been sandwiched between two card board frames to prepare samples of different pre-stretch values. Three different types of electrodes namely copper tape, silver grease and carbon grease have been pasted on the both sides of prestretched samples. Dissipation factor of pre-stretched and electrode adhered VHB sample has been experimentally determined at different frequency (upto 1 MHz) of input voltage using a LCR meter. Experimental results on the variation of dissipation factor with pre-straining, frequency (low to high) and electrode types are reported. The dissipation factor value is further used to estimate electrical efficiency at different biaxial pre-straining, frequency and electrode types.