Advancing Elastocaloric Cooling: Integrating Dielectric Electroactive Polymers for Enhanced Performance and Flexibility

Elastocaloric materials have emerged as one of the most promising technologies for heating and cooling due to their outstanding energy efficiency and environmental benefits. The DEAcool project seeks to push this technology further by incorporating dielectric electroactive polymers (EAPs) as actuators in elastocaloric (EC) systems. EAPs are highly flexible and energy-efficient, replacing conventional electric motors or hydraulic systems, and thus offering a substantial reduction in both weight and building space requirements without compromising energy efficiency. This novel approach will significantly improve the specific power density of EC systems in terms of both volume and mass, enabling a leap in performance. The introduction of these materials provides increased flexibility in system design, which could open up new areas of application, including wearable medical cooling devices, vaccine and food preservation, climate control in automotive and aerospace industries, satellite component cooling, and textile-integrated cooling systems. This contribution presents first concepts, alongside preliminary calculations and simulations that demonstrate the technical feasibility of combining EAP actuators with elastocaloric systems. These early results show promising potential for not only optimizing system performance but also enabling entirely new applications that are more efficient, compact, and versatile. The integration of EAP-based actuators into EC systems represents a significant step forward in sustainable thermal management technology.