Automated test setup to quantify the lifetime of dielectric elastomer actuators under a wide range of operating conditions

We present an automated test setup for the systematic performance and lifetime evaluation of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs). This setup, called the MAPLE setup, performs accelerated aging tests and allows quantifying how material choice, fabrication methods, voltage waveform, and environmental conditions influence DEA lifetime, an important step for commercial use of DEAs. The setup continuously monitors strain and electrode resistance of multiple DEAs under a wide range of environmental conditions (up to 85 degrees C and 85% relative humidity), with automatic breakdown detection to record device lifetime. To illustrate a use case, we investigate the lifetime of DEAs made of two different elastomer materials, comparing fixed polarity (FP) vs. periodically reversing the polarity of the actuation voltage. For DEAs made from a slide-ring material, lifetime improvements around 10x were observed at alternating polarity compared to FP. For DEAs made from silicone rubber, no improvement in lifetime was observed. This indicates that different degradation mechanisms are causing failure in the two materials.