A novel high-displacement piezoelectric actuator for active vibration control

In this paper we discuss the design and testing of a novel hydraulic actuator which uses a PZT ring as the active component. The actuator is configured so that the PZT ring is part of the body of the actuator and it drives a piston hydraulically to achieve a high displacement capacity. Thus, the device is considerably more compact and simple than most actuators found in the literature using a similar principle. The performance of this actuator in terms of the force and displacement that it can produce is theoretically and experimentally studied and compared with the potential performance that can be obtained with other piezoelectric elements commercially available.