Design and experimental validation of an annular dielectric elastomer actuator for active vibration isolation

Abstract

Abstract This paper proposes annular dielectric elastomer actuators (ADEAs) for active vibration isolation. A theoretical model is developed to characterize the actuator and parametrized based on experimental data. The parametric dependence of the natural frequency of the ADEA on the actuator geometry, applied voltage, and the pre-stretch of the elastomer is analyzed. The electromechanical behavior of the ADEA is also characterized experimentally and estimated by finite-impulse-response (FIR) based adaptive filter. Vibration control with the ADEA as the active vibration isolator is implemented by employing the filtered-x least-mean-square (Fx-LMS) algorithm due to incorporating the effect of the secondary path function. The vibration isolation ratios at the 7 and 11\u202fHz harmonics with the amplitudes of 320\u202fμm and 330\u202fμm are 10.53 and 11.81\u202fdB, respectively. For the isolated mass under the 9\u202fHz sinusoidal disturbance with peak-to-peak amplitude of 1400\u202fμm, vibration attenuation of 10.74\u202fdB is achieved. The results show that ADEAs have the potential for active vibration isolation systems even with large amplitude disturbance. It provides guidelines for the actuator design and promote the dielectric elastomers (DEs) for engineering applications.