Inhomogeneous deformations and pull-in instability in electroactive polymeric films

By means of a bifurcation analysis we show the onset of inhomogeneous equilibrium configurations in thin electroelastic polymeric films under assigned voltage. The resulting activation threshold decreases the diffusely adopted value obtained under the assumption of homogeneous deformations. We argue that the bifurcated inhomogeneous solution describes experimentally observed localization effects. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.