Study on design and experimental of a piezoelectric linear motor using columnar actuator

With the rapid development of modern precision manufacturing industry, actuators with high resolution and long stroke are needed in many application fields. Because of the unique advantages such as self-locking on the power off, compact structure, fast response etc., piezoelectric actuators have been taking place of the traditional actuators which are based on the principle of electromagnetic induction. In this research, piezoelectric stacks were utilized as driving source to propose a piezoelectric linear motor. Design requirements of this motor were presented first and the structure of the motor was proposed. By modeling its stator, the operating principle of the motor was analyzed. In order to validate the feasibility of the principle, a prototype was made. The experimental results of the prototype show that the driving foot of the prototype vibrated with elliptical trajectory while two piezoelectric stacks are applied with two sinuous voltage signals with the same frequency. When proper preload is applied between the stator and rotor, the maximum no-load velocity of the motor is 7.3mm/s, and the maximum thrust force of the motor is 6.38 N.