A CFRP/PZT laminated piezoelectric motor with high force density

This work presents a laminated piezoelectric (PZT) motor to achieve high force density, high strength, and compact structure. The oscillator consists of vibration units and a driving foot. Each of the vibration units is formed by symmetrically bonding two PZT ceramics on a carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) layer to improve its strength. The oscillator works in hybrid mode of the first longitudinal vibration (L1) and second bending vibration (B2). The finite-element method is adopted to tune the resonance frequencies of the two modes, and the vibration characteristics are experimentally analyzed. The strength test shows that the presence of the CFRP layer can increase the overall strength of the oscillator by 28% compared with a pure PZT motor. To evaluate the performance, the load characteristics of the fabricated prototype (with a size of 39 × 10 × 4.6 mm3 and weight of 10.6 g) are tested on a designed testbed. The single-phase driving method is used to drive the motor, and the best performance is obtained at the B2-mode frequency. The maximum thrust force, no-load speed, and output power reach 17 N, 335 mm s−1, and 775 mW, respectively, at a drive voltage of 100 Vp. Meanwhile, a thrust density of 1604 N kg−1 and an output power density of 73.11 W kg−1 are achieved. The thrust density is much higher than that of the other motors that operate in the same modes.