Electro- and Magneto-Mechanics of Soft Solids (eBook)

This book examines the electro- and magneto-mechanics of soft composite materials and structures, and focuses on magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) and dielectric elastomer composites (DECs), which are composite materials that comprise ferromagnetic and high-dielectric/conducting filler nano- and micro-particles embedded in a soft polymeric matrix. This gives rise to a coupled magneto- and electro-mechanical response at the macroscopic (order of millimeters and larger) scale when they are subjected to magneto- electro-mechanical external stimuli. While such MRE and DEC materials and devices can become unstable at some critical electro-magneto-mechanical loading, their response may be well controlled in the post-instability regime. Moreover, recent advances on the complete electro-magneto-mechanical coupling are presented. All those aforementioned features motivate the operation of these devices in this unstable region to obtain controlled pattern formation, soft robotic motion and artificial muscles, controllable band-gap acoustic and electromagnetic properties, energy harvesting as well as actively controlled stiffness (for cell-growth). The book contains four individual chapters covering work on the fundamentals (O. Lopez-Pamies) and the modeling (M. Gei) of electroactive solids, the modeling of magnetoactive solids (K. Danas), and the analysis of elastic instabilities (Y. Fu).

Kostas Danas holds a tenured position as a CNRS Director of Research (Directeur de Recherche) and Professor at the Solid Mechanics Laboratory (LMS), Department of Mechanics at Ecole Polytechnique, where he teaches courses on continuum and fracture mechanics. His research focuses on the numerical, theoretical and experimental analysis of microstructured active elastomers and their instabilities as well as on the modelling and fracture of metallic and 3D printed polymeric porous materials. 

Oscar Lopez-Pamies holds PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from the University of Pennsylvania (USA) and the École Polytechnique (France). He is currently the Colonel Harry F. & Frankie M. Lovell Endowed Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the mechanics of solids, constitutive modeling, homogenization, and numerical methods for PDEs. His research focuses on the development of mathematical theories and associated numerical methods to describe, explain, and predict the mechanical and physical behavior, stability, and failure of solids.