@inproceedings{31501,
  author = {Behrouz Tavakol and Michael Bozlar and Guillaume Froelicher and Howard A. Stone and Ilhan A. Aksay and Douglas P. Holmes},
  title = {Buckling of Dielectric Elastomeric Plates for Soft, Microfluidic Pumps},
  abstract = { <p>
	Buckling of plates and rods are often avoided in design of structures; however, proper implementation of these<br>instabilities lead to advanced material functionality. In this work, we use the buckling of circular plates for pumping<br>fluids with a specific flow rate. Dielectric elastomers have been widely used in many applications such as soft<br>robotics, opto-electro-mechanical systems, and energy harvesting devices due to their unique mechanical and<br>electrical properties as well as their ability to convert electrical signals to mechanical actuations and vice versa. If we<br>confine a thin dielectric elastomeric plate at its edge and expose it to an electric field, it will undergo buckling. When<br>embedded within a microfluidic device, the out-of-plane deformation can be used as a pumping mechanism to inject<br>the fluids above or below the plate into channels. In order for the device to be compatible with fluids, the dielectric<br>film was sandwiched between two thin, flexible, solid electrodes that can not only be in direct contact with fluids, but<br>also undergo significant deformation without losing their functionality. We conducted experiments to quantify the<br>voltage-induced buckling instability and measured the flow rate as a function of voltage. In addition, the effect of<br>other boundary conditions such as volume and pressure difference between two sides of the thin film was investigated.<br>We also show that these pumps can be used in series and/or parallel to enhance the flow rate besides the pump<br>efficiency. Finally, we offer an analytical prediction that uses plate buckling theory to estimate the critical voltage for<br>buckling of confined dielectric plates.
</p>
 },
  year = {2013},
  journal = {Society of Engineering Science ASME-AMD - Summer Meeting},
  month = {07/2013},
  address = {Providence, RI},
  language = {eng},
}