Development of a stick-slip piezoelectric actuator using bending deformation based on hammer-type driving foot

A new stick-slip piezoelectric actuator using bending deformation based on a hammer-type driving foot is proposed. Ten pieces of piezoelectric ceramic plates instead of a piezoelectric stack are clamped as a sandwich configuration to be served as an actuation unit in this work. The actuator can generate bending deformation by exciting the piezoelectric ceramic plates. Then the bending deformation is converted into the pressing and lateral displacements to press and drive the slider simultaneously due to the special structure of the hammer-type driving foot. The proposed piezoelectric actuator is introduced, and its working principle is clarified. The actuator is designed, and its main sizes are determined by means of the simulation method. A prototype is fabricated, and its output characteristics are measured. The measured results show that the proposed actuator obtained the output speed of 4.44 mm/s when the voltage and frequency are 200Vp-p and 1940 Hz. These results verify the feasibility of the proposed piezoelectric actuator based on a hammer-type driving foot in this work.