A Dual Stage Low Power Converter Driving for Piezoelectric Actuator Applied in Micro Mobile Robot

Abstract

Piezoelectric actuators are widely utilized to convert electrical energy into mechanical strain with considerable potential in micro mobile robot applications. However, the use of Pb-based Lanthanumdoped Zirconate Titanates (PZTs) leads to two difficulties in drive circuit design, namely, high voltage step-up ratio and high energy conversion efficiency. When some devices driven by piezoelectric actuators are used in emerging technologies, such as micro mobile robot, to perform special tasks, low mass, high energy density, and high conversion efficiency are strategically important. When these demands are considered, conventional drive circuits exhibit the disadvantages of being too bulky and inefficient for low mass applications. To overcome the aforementioned drawbacks, and to address the need for a piezoelectric bimorph actuator, this work proposed a high step-up ratio flyback converter cascaded with a bidirectional half-bridge stage controlled, via a pulse width modulation strategy, and a novel control method. Simulations and experiments were conducted to verify the ability of the proposed converter to drive a 100 V-input piezoelectric bimorph actuator using a prototype 108 mg (excluding printed circuit board mass), 169 (13 × 13) mm2, and 500 mW converter.

A Review of Design and Fabrication of the Bionic Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicles

“…As shown in Figure 15 , replacing the inductor in a classical boost converter with a tapped inductor results in a combination of boost and flyback converter topology, named the tapped inductor boost converter [ 72 ]. The voltage gain of this converter is greatly improved, which depends on the switching duty cycle and the transformer turns ratio.…”

Special Feature on Advanced Mobile Robotics

“…A new class of actuator was studied especially in micro-robots. Chen et al [63] proposed a high step-up ratio flyback converter for a piezoelectric bimorph actuator in micro mobile robot. Medical devices and rehabilitation mechanisms are often involved with smart materials such as electro-rheological fluids, magneto-rheological fluids and shape memory alloys.…”

Enhancing Electrocaloric Heat Pump Performance by Over 99% Efficient Power Converters and Offset Fields

“…Charge recovery circuits based on resonant circuits have been used in literature for electrocaloric capacitors to recover around 80% [7], [8] of the stored energy. Further circuits might be adapted from known circuits for piezoelectric actuator drivers [9], [10]. This state-of-the-art charge recovery circuits for electrocaloric capacitors can be replaced by highly-efficient bi-directional switched-mode power supplies (SMPS).…”

“…which is the sum of the non-zero input work W EC for a useful thermodynamic cycle with ∆T > 0 and the dissipation W DF within the material with DF > 0 during that cycle, and the external work W EXT , associated with the electrical losses of the electrical charging and discharging circuit with finite charging efficiency η < 100%.The first part of the internal work is calculated for a lossless electrocaloric dielectric for a symmetric and triangular rising and falling electric field (the sum of both transition times is t T , where the summed up field change of 2∆E with slope ± dE/ dt happens), with the already calculated field dependent temperatures from Eqn 10. and Eqn.…”