An Easily Fabricated Linear Piezoelectric Actuator Using Sandwich Longitudinal Vibrators With Four Driving Feet

A piezoelectric actuator using three sandwich longitudinal vibrators is proposed and tested. The two horizontal vibrators are parallel to each other and orthogonal to the vertical vibrator. The ends of the two horizontal vibrators serve as the four driving feet. The actuator has a simple fabricating process, which will shorten the period of fabrication. Two modes of the actuator are used to get the elliptical trajectories on the driving feet. The frequencies of the two modes are tuned to be about 21.60 kHz with modal analysis by the finite element method (FEM). The operating principle is also examined with transient analysis by FEM. A prototype is fabricated and its vibration characteristics are verified by using a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer. The prototype shows the best mechanical performance with the optimum working frequency and phase difference of 18.50 kHz and 60°, respectively. The typical output of the prototype is a no-load speed of 439.41 mm/s, a maximum thrust of 40 N, and a maximum power of 5.01 W at the voltage of 200 ${V} _{\mathrm {P-P}}$ . The mechanical characteristics of the prototype show that the exciting voltages can be used for the speed control due to the approximately linear relationship between them.