Waves in pre-stretched incompressible soft electroactive cylinders : Exact solution

This paper studies wave propagation in a soft electroactive cylinder with an underlying finite deformation in the presence of an electric biasing field. Based on a recently proposed nonlinear framework for electroelasticity and the associated linear incremental theory, the basic equations governing the axisymmetric wave motion in the cylinder, which is subjected to homogeneous pre-stretches and pre-existing axial electric displacement, are presented when the electroactive material is isotropic and incompressible. Exact wave solution is then derived in terms of (modified) Bessel functions. For a prototype model of nonlinear electroactive material, illustrative numerical results are given. It is shown that the effect of pre-stretch and electric biasing field could be significant on the wave propagation characteristics. © 2012 The Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.