Harvesting energy with an out-of-plane dielectric elastomer generator

This note concerns the numerical analysis of the performance of an annular membrane dielectric elastomer generator deforming non-homogeneously out-of-plane. The prestretch of the membrane is crucial for an improved behaviour of this device. We evaluate its positive effects on the performance by employing a hyperelastic formulation. Moreover, fixing the external radius, we compare the behaviour of two generators characterized by different values of the radius ratio Re/Ri, namely 2 and 4. Numerical results show that the generator with the smaller ratio has a better performance. (© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)