Manufacturing and Tests of a Tubular Multilayer Dielectric Elastomer Actuator for an Impedance Pump

During the last three decades, the field of electro active polymers (EAP) has seen a rapidly growing interest worldwide. These materials can exhibit many advantages, such as elasticity, high energy density, high dynamics and are often nicknamed artificial muscles. In particular, Dielectric Elastomer Actuator (DEA) are good candidates for soft pump. In this paper, we manufactured and test a tubular actuator further used in a valve-less pump. A mean net flowrate up to 0.11 L.min
^-1
has been reached using a frequency of 8 Hz, a duty cycle of 0.5 and a voltage of 9.5 kV.