Tunable Stiffness of Electrorheological Elastomers by Designing Mesostructures
Electrorheological elastomers have broad and important applications. While existing studies
mostly focus on microstructures of electrorheological elastomers, their mesoscale structures have
been rarely investigated. We present a theory on the design of mesostructures of electrorheological
elastomers that consist of two phases with different permittivity. We show that the deformation of
elastomers can reorient their mesostructures, which consequently results in variations of their
effective permittivity, leading to stiffening, softening, or instability of the elastomer. Optimal
design of the mesostructures can give giant tunable stiffness. Our theoretical model is further
validated by results from numerical simulations.
E-mail address: xz69 [at] duke.edu (xz69[at]duke[dot]edu)