Piezoelectric inertia motors-also known as stick-slip motors or (smooth) impact drives-use the inertia of a body to drive it in small steps by means of an uninterrupted friction contact. In addition to the typical advantages of piezoelectric motors, they are especially suited for miniaturisation due to their simple structure and inherent fine-positioning capability. Originally developed for positioning in microscopy in the 1980s, they have nowadays also found application in mass-produced consumer goods. Recent research results are likely to enable more applications of piezoelectric inertia motors in the future. This contribution gives a critical overview of their historical development, functional principles, and related terminology. The most relevant aspects regarding their design-i.e., friction contact, solid state actuator, and electrical excitation-are discussed, including aspects of control and simulation. The article closes with an outlook on possible future developments and research perspectives.

A piezoelectric energy harvester is an electromechanical device that converts ambient mechanical vibration into electric power. Most existing vibration energy harvesting devices operate effectively at a single frequency only, dictated by the design of the device. This frequency must match the frequency of the host structure vibration. However, real world structural vibrations rarely have a specific constant frequency. Therefore, piezoelectric harvesters that generate usable power across a range of exciting frequencies are required to make this technology commercially viable. Currently known harvester tuning techniques have many limitations, in particular they miss the ability to work during harvester operation and most often cannot perform a precise tuning. This paper describes the design and testing of a vibration energy harvester with tunable resonance frequency, wherein the tuning is accomplished by changing the attraction force between two permanent magnets by adjusting the distance between the magnets. This tuning technique allows the natural frequency to be manipulated before and during operation of the harvester. Furthermore the paper presents a physical description of the frequency tuning effect. The experimental results achieved with a piezoelectric bimorph fit the calculated results very well. The calculation and experimental results show that using this tuning technique the natural frequency of the harvester can be varied efficiently within a wide range: in the test setup, the natural frequency of the piezoelectric bimorph could be increased by more than 70%.

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Piezoelectric structures are nowadays used in many different applications. A better understanding of the influence of material properties and geometrical design on the performance of these structures helps to develop piezoelectric structures specifically designed for their application. Different equivalent circuits have been introduced in the literature to investigate the behaviour of piezoelectric transducers. The model parameters are usually determined from measurements covering the characteristic frequencies of the piezoelectric transducer. This article introduces an analytical technique for calculating the mechanical and electrical equivalent system parameters and characteristic frequencies based on material properties and geometry for a cantilever bimorph structure. The model is validated by measurements using a cantilever bimorph and fits the experimental results better than previous models. The model gives a full set of piezoelectric transducer parameters and is therefore well suited for further theoretical investigations of piezoelectric transducers for different applications. The results also show that even small manufacturing tolerances have a considerable effect on the system parameters and characteristic frequencies. This might lead to intolerable deviations, especially in dynamic applications and should be avoided by careful design and production.

Piezoelectric inertia motors, also known as stick–slip drives or (smooth) impact drives, use the inertia of a body to drive it by a friction contact in small steps, in the majority of motors composed of a stick phase and a slip phase between the friction partners. For optimizing inertia motors, it is important to understand the friction contact correctly and to measure its properties appropriately. This contribution presents experimental set-ups for measuring the contact force, friction force and relative displacement in an actual inertia motor with a dry friction contact and numerical simulations of the motor operation. The motor uses a pre-stressed multilayer actuator with a displacement in the range of 20 µm. It is shown that a previously postulated condition for the applicability of simple kinetic friction models is well fulfilled for the investigated motor. The friction contact in the motor is simulated using different kinetic friction models. The input for the friction models is the measured motion of the rod. The models qualitatively reproduce the measured motion but show quantitative deviations varying with frequency. These can be explained by vibrations of the driving rod that are experimentally investigated.