Target of this article will be the energy harvesting with dielectric elastomers for wave energy conversion. The main goal of this article is to introduce a new developed material profile enabling a specific amount of energy, making the harvesting process competitive against other existing offshore generation technologies. Electroactive polymers offer the chance to start with small wave energy converters to gain experiences and carry out a similar development as wind energy. Meanwhile there is a consortium being formed in Germany to develop such materials and processes for future products in this new business area. In order to demonstrate the applicability of the technological advancements, a scale demonstrator of a wave energy generator will be developed as well.

Date Published: 9 April 2013
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 8687, Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2013, 86870K (9 April 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2009113

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8687:
Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2013
Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Editor(s)