Effects of Electrode Configuration for Performances of Voltage-Induction-Type Electrostatic Motors

Abstract

This paper describes a general theory for the characteristics of voltage-induction-type electrostatic motors (VITEMs). VITEMs are one of macro-scale electrostatic film motors with multi-phase electrodes on both the sliders and the stators. The motor drives synchronously without voltage feeding wires to its slider due to the indirect power supply using electrostatic induction. Although the numbers of electrode phases can be chosen arbitrary to realize the motor, the characteristics of the motors were analyzed only for two specific cases in the previous studies. This work extends the previously proposed theories so that they can handle a general case, in which the slider and the stator have m-and n-phase electrodes with arbitrary numbers for m and n. The theory can estimate the optimized thrust force performance for any electrode configurations, when given fundamental parameters regarding the capacitance coefficients of the motor, which can be obtained either experimentally or numerically. Using the proposed theory, several different configurations of VITEMs are analyzed and compared, in terms of thrust force performance. The results indicate that electrode thickness considerably affects the thrust force performance of VITEMs, which is not the case for other synchronous electrostatic film motors, and thus suggest that the design of VITEMs should more carefully consider the three-dimensional structure of the electrodes.

An Extended Model for Ripple Analysis of 2–4 Phase Resonant Electrostatic Induction Motors

“…The frequency f is typically more than 10 kHz, which is high enough compared to the mechanical response of a motor. Therefore, the vibratory force will be damped and will not appear in the output [28,31].…”

“…This network can be expressed as a capacitance matrix. In [31], the capacitance matrix for the 2-4 phase resonant electrostatic motors takes the form…”