Design and Experimental Research of a Novel Stick-Slip Type Piezoelectric Actuator

Abstract

A linear piezoelectric actuator based on the stick-slip principle is presented and tested in this paper. With the help of changeable vertical preload force flexure hinge, the designed linear actuator can achieve both large travel stick-slip motion and high-resolution stepping displacement. The developed actuator mainly consists of a bridge-type flexure hinge mechanism, a compound parallelogram flexure hinge mechanism, and two piezoelectric stacks. The mechanical structure and motion principle of the linear actuator were illustrated, and the finite element method (FEM) is adopted. An optimal parametric study of the flexure hinge is performed by a finite element analysis-based response surface methodology. In order to investigate the actuator’s working performance, a prototype was manufactured and a series of experiments were carried out. The results indicate that the maximum motion speed is about 3.27 mm/s and the minimum stepping displacement is 0.29 μm. Finally, a vibration test was carried out to obtain the first natural frequency of the actuator, and an in situ observation was conducted to investigate actuator’s stick-slip working condition. The experimental results confirm the feasibility of the proposed actuator, and the motion speed and displacement are both improved compared with the traditional stick-slip motion actuator.

Piezoelectric stick-slip actuators with flexure hinge mechanisms: A review

“…In the initial research of the FHMs-PSSAs, Chang et al designed a linear amplification mechanism by using the Scott-Russel mechanism principle, as shown in Figure 6(a); the designed actuator could realize large step output with low starting voltage; besides the displacement amplification mechanism, this was also attributed to its appropriate preload force applied by the slider (Chang and Li, 1999). And then, the bridge type (see Figure 1(a)(ii)) (Li et al, 2017a; Zhou et al, 2017) and the microgripper type (see Figure 6(b)) (Huang and Zhao, 2014; Huang et al, 2012) FHMs-PSSAs were developed to achieve the long-stroke and high-precision positioning. To broaden the application of FHMs-PSSAs, Huang et al developed a microgripper type FHMs-PSSA, which was used as a long-stroke scratch drive component in the y -direction of the designed in-situ indentation/scratch test instrument (Huang, 2014; Huang et al, 2012), see Figure 6(d).…”

A Novel Rotation-Structure Based Stick-Slip Piezoelectric Actuator with High Consistency in Forward and Reverse Motions

“…To suppress the backward motion, resonant/off-resonant hybrid excitation signals had been adopted [15]. To improve the motion speed, many new driving mechanisms had been designed [16][17][18][19]. In addition, some ingenious control methods had been used to improve positioning accuracy [20,21].…”

Design and Experimental Research of a Rotary Micro-Actuator Based on a Shearing Piezoelectric Stack

“…The direct driving piezoelectric actuator [20,21] can only produce tens of microns of displacement. The control system of an inchworm-type piezoelectric actuator [22,23,24,25,26,27] is highly complex due to coordination of multiple structures, and it cannot be driven by high-frequency alternating voltage. In contrast, the inertial piezoelectric actuator [28,29,30] offers the advantages of high precision, large stroke, high working frequency and rapid motion speed and is also conveniently driven.…”