Development and experiment evaluation of an inertial piezoelectric actuator using bending-bending hybrid modes

An inertial driving piezoelectric actuator using bending-bending hybrid modes was proposed. In contrast to previous inertial driving piezoelectric actuators using PZT stacks, the proposed actuator used a piezoelectric transducer that could bend in the horizontal and vertical directions independently. The horizontal bending of the transducer was used to push the slider to move step-by-step. The vertical bending was used to change the normal force quickly to regulate the friction force in the driving process. The operating principle and inertial driving mechanism were planned, discussed and simulated by finite element analysis. The feasibility of the proposed mechanism was verified by experiments. The experimental results showed that the step distance was linearly related to the voltage of the horizontal excitation signal, and it was greatly improved by the vertical bending. The prototype achieved a maximum speed of 350 μm/s at a voltage of 400 Vp-p and frequency of 250 Hz, and it achieved a maximum thrust force of 5.88 N at a preload of 63 N.