Design and fabrication of a large displacement piezoelectric actuator

Abstract

Multilayer actuators with twenty-six 0.7mm-layers (18mm×18mm×10mm) of lead zirconate titanate (PZT-4) were made and tested. These actuators were fabricated in the laboratory with simple techniques and cost low. The new fabrication method not only greatly reduced the cost of piezoelectric stack, but also made it possible to obtain any required size of piezoelectric stacks in the laboratory. A micro-displacement amplifier to match the fabricated multilayer actuators is also designed, fabricated and test. Experiment results show that the micro-displacement amplifier can obtain a peak to peak displacement of 160 um under the quasi-static condition.