TOPIC :

Introduction to Selfhealing materials and Dielectric

Elastomers
Introduction to Self healing materials
 Self healing materials have the ability to restore its original
shape without any external diagnosis of problem and/or human
intervention.
 Is a artificial or synthetically created substance.
 Generally materials will degrade overtime due to fatigue,
environmental conditions or damage during operating
conditions.
 Damages like crack and other type of damage on a microscopic
level have been shown due to change in thermal, electrical,
acoustical properties of materials and propagation of crack can
eventually lead to failure of materials.
 So smart materials like self healing materials, counter
degradation through through the initiation of repair mechanism
which responds to microscopic damage.
 Some smart materials ie, self healing materials can adopt in
change of shape incurred by environmental change to original
shape is obtained.
 Self healing materials like polymers or elastomers have the
properties of getting the shape of the material back without the
help of the human intervention, however activate in response to
an external stimulus (light, temp change etc) to initiate the
healing process.
 Self healing materials could prevent costs incured by material
failure and lower costs of a number of different industrial
process through longer post lifetime and reduction of
inefficiency.
Three process of self healing property
1. Actuation – Immediately after damage is occurred.
2. Transfer of materials to the space obtained inside the material
after the damage(very quickly).
3. Chemical repair process.
Dielectric Elastomer(D.E)

 D.E are the smart material that produces large strain due to
application of voltage resulting in cause of Compressive force
caused by the Electrostatic pressure on the body and get backs
to its original position once the applied voltage is removed.
 D.E belong to the group of electro active polymer.
 D.E actuators transform electric energy into mechanical energy.
The following procedure been followed for the function of an Dielectric
elastomer,
• Elastomeric film so called dielectric layer(actuator) been coated with
electrodes on the top and bottom surface of the elastomeric film.
• The terminals of the voltage current been connected one end to
source(Electric supply) and the other end to the actuator.
• Once the current been supplied from the source to the actuator , the force of
action i.e. electrostatic pressure developed causes an compressive force on
actuator.
• This results in stretch of an actuator in x direction causing enlargement of
the actuator and the actuator comes back to original shape when the supply
is Short circuited (Electric current flow is nil).