Dynamic Property Characterization of Smart Piezoelectric Multi-Morph

Description

Piezoelectric bimorphs are special piezoelectric devices widely used as displacement transducers or actuators requiring precise submicron increments. A bimorph consists of two identical, plate-like piezoelectric elements stacked together. Coated with electrodes, it can have parallel and antiparallel arrangements depending on the poling directions. Under an applied voltage, one element will contract and the other will expand, resulting in a bending motion normally many times greater than the change in the length of a single element. Obviously, it is crucial to be able to accurately model the electromechanical behaviours of such a device. Piezoelectric bimorphs are used in ink-jet printers, phonographic equipment, micro-electro-mechanical (MEMS) components for chopping optical beams, and recently in scanning tunnelling microscopes.In this project, an innovative engineering model of a smart piezoelectric multi-morph (multi-layered morph) will be constructed. Accurate analytical formulation and numerical analysis will be developed based on (i) the transfer matrix method coupled with asymptotic approximation, and (ii) a variational energy principle with Ritz numerical analysis. Three-dimensional solutions for characterizing the dynamic response and vibration analysis of piezoelectric multi-morph will be conducted.