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Dielectric elastomer transducers (DET) progressively attract attention in research and industry. One major reason is their diverse use as actuator, sensor or generator. For manufacturing a DE stack-transducer for example, first, multilayer DE laminates consisting of several DE layers are produced. The submodules are cut out from the DE laminate and can then be stacked to a DE stack-transducer. In order to minimize the scrap rate, increase the productivity, and monitor the manufacturing process testing of multilayered composites during manufacturing process could be favorable. The proposed test approach within this contribution is capacitancebased, versatile applicable, and can be used to test DE laminates or DE submodules. An electrical voltage vtest is applied to additionally added external electrodes (anode and cathode), exposing the multilayer composite to an electric field per layer of EDE. The testing voltage is chosen in such a way that the testing electric field strength holds the relation EDE < Etest < Ecrit. Hence, it is selected in between the operation field strength EDE and the critical field strength Ecrit. If two electrode layers inside the DET are conductively connected due to a defect in production, a breakdown may occur. The production quality of the DE composite can be determined by measuring the capacitive behavior before and after applying the high voltage as well as compare these to the analytical calculated capacitance. In this way, faulty DE submodules may be detected by scanning the DE laminate at multiple positions. A test procedure to prove the dielectric properties, to improve the production quality, and thus to reduce the scrap rate is proposed. Methodologically, an analytical approach and FEM-based simulation are used to compare various concepts and to design a test approach. First measurements prove the developed testing approach.
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