2003IJL

連英傑 (Ing-Jye Lian)

Analysis and Design of a Novel PZT Microactuator

新型壓電微致動器之模擬分析及設計

Due to the coupling effect, the design and simulation of piezoelectric micro-actuators are more difficult as compared to that of thermal microactuators and electrostatic microactuators. Piezoelectric material has several advantages for designing microactuators. However, the design is usually done by the experimental or try-and-error method which is not so effective. To the author’s knowledge, it should be noted that there is not a simple method already developed for the design and simulation of the piezoelectric microactuators. This thesis tried to use the commercial available simulation software, i.e. Coventorware, as a simple tool for the new design and simulation of piezoelectric microactuators.

In this research, we proposed to use the software of Coventorware for the new design and rapid simulation of piezoelectric microactuators. After comparing three published papers of piezoelectric microactuator, which the design is performed by experimental, analytical and FEM respectively, with the results of simulation by Coventorware, it is confirmed that those three results are similar to each one by Coventorware. Therefore, we could understand the effective applying range and reliability for the design and simulation of piezoelectric actuator by Coventorware. Besides, using Coventorware is very amiable and simple of access environment with easy to simulate more complex problem. The advantage to use Coventorware for simulation of piezoelectric microactuator go through to significantly reduce the lead-time as well as to accelerate the product development by this computer aided design.

In this study, the author proposed two novel designs of piezoelectric microactuators. According to the simulation results by Coventorware, both novel piezoelectric microactuators show the linear displacement in horizontal direction. For the first novel design of piezoelectric actuator, the aim is to produce large displacement (0.75μm) of the microactuator with small voltage applied (30V) by the usage of d15 piezoelectric coefficient together with employing the long arm and special design of flexure hinge. As to the second novel design of piezoelectric microactuator, we are able to design at the first time the bi-directional displacement of this piezoelectric microactuator through utilizing inverse electric field which can generate the displacement in two opposite direction. Coventorware was employed for the design and simulation of both above mentioned novel piezoelectric microactuators successfully, which predicts the various simulated displacements of the two new piezoelectric microactuators when being applied by a wide range of different values of voltage upon them.