Actuators Using Piezoelectric Stacks and Displacement Enhancers

Actuators are used to drive all active mechanisms including machines, robots, and manipulators to name a few. The actuators are responsible for moving, manipulating, displacing, pushing and executing any action that is needed by the mechanism. There are many types and principles of actuation that are responsible for these movements ranging from electromagnetic, electroactive, thermo-mechanic, piezoelectric, electrostrictive etc. Actuators are readily available from commercial producers but there is a great need for reducing their size, increasing their efficiency and reducing their weight. Studies at JPL’s Non Destructive Evaluation and Advanced Actuators (NDEAA) Laboratory have been focused on the use of piezoelectric stacks and novel designs taking advantage of piezoelectric’s potential to provide high torque/force density actuation and high electromechanical conversion efficiency. The actuators/motors that have been developed and reviewed in this paper are operated by various horn configurations as well as the use of pre-stress flexures that make them thermally stable and increases their coupling efficiency. The use of monolithic designs that pre-stress the piezoelectric stack eliminates the use of compression stress bolt. These designs enable the embedding of developed solid-state motors/actuators in any structure with the only macroscopically moving parts are the rotor or the linear translator. Finite element modeling and design tools were used to determine the requirements and operation parameters and the results were used to simulate, design and fabricate novel actuators/motors. The developed actuators and performance will be described and discussed in this paper.