Simulation of surface acoustic wave motor with spherical slider

The operation of a surface acoustic wave (SAW) motor using spherical-shaped sliders was demonstrated by Kurosawa et al. (1994). It was necessary to modify the previous simulation models for usual ultrasonic motors because of this slider shape and the high frequency vibration. A conventional ultrasonic motor has a flat contact surface slider and a hundredth driving frequency; so, the tangential motion caused by the elasticity of the slider and stator with regard to the spherical slider of the SAW motor requires further investigation. In this paper, a dynamic simulation model for the SAW motor is proposed. From the simulation result, the mechanism of the SAW motor was clarified (i.e., levitation and contact conditions were repeated during the operation). The transient response of the motor speed was simulated. The relationships between frictional factor and time constant and vibration velocity of the stator and the slider speed were understood. The detailed research regarding the elastic deformation caused by preload would be helpful to construct an exact simulation model for the next work.     

Standing wave bi-directional linearly moving ultrasonic motor

A standing wave bi-directional linearly moving ultrasonic motor has been studied for the purpose of implementing a practical linear ultrasonic motor with simple structure, simple driving and high resolution. The fundamental principle of this linear motor is projections on the right sides of a standing wave crests generating thrust force right-diagonally on the slider pressed against the projections. Correspondingly, projections on the left sides of the wave crests make the slider move toward the left. In order to realize bi-directional actuating, vibration mode B3 or B4 is excited in a rectangular plate-type vibrator to make the projections on the right sides or the left sides of the wave crests. In this paper, the operation principle of the linear motor is demonstrated. Furthermore, a prototype linear ultrasonic motor of 40 mm in length, 10 mm in width is fabricated and investigated. The following performances have been achieved: maximum speed 200 mm/s, maximum force output 150 gf, and resolution less than 0.1 mum.     

Elastic contact conditions to optimize friction drive of surface acoustic wave motor

The optimum pressing force, namely the preload, for a slider to obtain superior operation conditions in a surface acoustic wave motor have been examined. We used steel balls as sliders. The preload was controlled using a permanent magnet. The steel balls were 0.5, 1, and 2 mm diameter, with the differences in diameter making it possible to change contact conditions, such as the contact pressure, contact area, and deformation of the stator and the slider. The stator transducer was lithium niobate, 128 degrees rotated, y-cut x-propagation substrate. The driving frequency of the Rayleigh wave was about 10 MHz. Hence, the particle vibration amplitude at the surface is as small as 10 nm. For superior friction drive conditions, a high contact pressure was required. For example, in the case of the 1 mm diameter steel ball at the sinusoidal driving voltage of 180 V(peak), the slider speed was 43 cm/sec, the thrust output force was 1 mN, and the acceleration was 23 times as large as the gravitational acceleration at a contact pressure of 390 MPa. From the Hertz theory of contact stress, the contact area radius was only 3 mum. The estimation of the friction drive performance was carried out from the transient traveling distance of the slider in a 3 msec burst drive. As a result, the deformation of the stator and the slider by the preload should be half of the vibration amplitude. This condition was independent of the ball diameter and the vibration amplitude. The output thrust per square millimeter was 50 N, and the maximum speed was 0.7 m/sec. From these results, we conclude that it is possible for the surface acoustic wave motor to have a large output force, high speed, quick response, long traveling distance, and a thin micro linear actuator.     

An estimation of load characteristics of an ultrasonic motor by measuring transient responses

To measure the characteristics of ultrasonic motors, such as the maximum torque, torque-speed relationship and the frictional coefficient at the contact surface, a method in which the torque is calculated from the transient responses is proposed. The rise curve that is the transitional change in the rotor speed soon after turning on the motor gives the load characteristics, while the fall curve that is the decay of the rotor speed after turning off the motor yields the frictional coefficient of the contact surface. This method requires only a short time (the transient time of the motor) to complete the measurement. The relations between the transient responses, the load characteristics and the frictional force are analyzed, and the method is applied to a hybrid transducer type rotary motor and a traveling wave type linear motor.     

A standing wave-type noncontact linear ultrasonic motor

In this study, a novel standing wave-type noncontact linear ultrasonic motor is proposed and analyzed. This linear ultrasonic motor uses a properly controlled ultrasonic standing wave to levitate and drive a slider. A prototype of the motor was constructed by using a wedge-shaped aluminum stator, which was placed horizontally and driven by a multilayer PZT vibrator. The levitation and motion of the slider were observed. Assuming that the driving force was generated by the turbulent acoustic streaming in the boundary air layer next to the bottom surface of the slider, a theoretical model was developed. The calculated characteristics of this motor were found to agree quite well with the experimental results. Based on the experimental and theoretical results, guidelines for increasing the displacement and speed of the slider were obtained. It was found that increasing the stator vibration displacement, or decreasing the gradient of the stator vibration velocity and the weight per unit area of the slider, led to an increase of the slider displacement. It was also found that increasing the amplitude and gradient of the stator vibration velocity, or decreasing the weight per unit area of the slider and the driving frequency, gave rise to an increase of the slider speed. There exists an optimum roughness of the bottom surface of the slider at which the slider speed has a maximum     

Force transfer model and characteristics of hybrid transducer type ultrasonic motors

The characteristics of longitudinal-torsional hybrid transducer-type ultrasonic motors (HTUSM) are low speed and high torque. The discontinuous-surface-contact mode between the stator and the rotor is different from the many-point-contact mode of traveling wave motors, which is also an essential cause for high torque. Therefore, it is important to analyze its force transfer model between the rotor and the stator. In this paper, issues of using the method of equivalent circuit model are addressed. The relationships between the contact angle, preload, and physical parameters of frictional materials are given, according to the impulse conservation law axially. The equations describing output torque, amplitudes of longitudinal and torsional vibration, and parameters of the rotor are derived according to the principle that the work done by the load is equal to that by the driving force in one vibrating cycle. All factors that influence the mechanical characteristics are analyzed, and accuracy and suitability of the force transfer model are verified by comparison with the prototype motor. The formula for transfer efficiency on the stator/rotor interface is given, and the low-efficiency of this type motor is explained. The wide-working frequency range property of this type motor is shown with experimental results. Based on this study, the parameters of the rotor and preload are determined. The maximum torque of the prototype motor is up to 13.2 nm, and no-load speed of this type of motor is 12.5 rpm.     

Traveling-wave piezoelectric linear motor part II: experiment and performance evaluation

This article continues the discussion of a traveling-wave piezoelectric linear motor. Part I of this article dealt with the design and analysis of the stator of a traveling-wave piezoelectric linear motor. In this part, the discussion focuses on the structure and modeling of the contact layer and the carriage. In addition, the performance analysis and evaluation of the linear motor also are dealt with in this study. The traveling wave is created by stator, which is constructed by a series of bimorph actuators arranged in a line and connected to form a meander-line structure. Analytical and experimental results of the performance are presented and shown to be almost in agreement. Power losses due to friction and transmission are studied and found to be significant. Compared with other types of linear motors, the motor in this study is capable of supporting heavier loads and provides a larger thrust force.     

A piezoelectric motor using flexural vibration of a thin piezoelectric membrane

This paper describes a new implementation of a disk-type piezoelectric motor, whose stator is a commercial available piezomembrane composed of a nickel alloy disk to which a piezoceramic disk is bonded. The two disks are concentric, and the total thickness is very small. Ultrasonic motors are based on the concept of driving a rotor by mechanical vibration excited on a stator, via the piezoelectric effect. The rotor is in contact with the stator, and the driving force is the frictional force between rotor and stator. To transform the mechanical vibration of the stator in the rotor rotation, a traveling wave must be excited on the stator surface. The proposed motor can be regarded as a disk-type, single wavelength motor in which the traveling wave is due to the natural flexural vibration of the piezomembrane at low frequency. The behavior of the stator is analyzed both theoretically, by using the theory of isotropic and homogeneous vibrating plates, and by means of a commercial finite element computer code, finding a good agreement with the experimental results. The main features of the motor are very small thickness, appreciable torque, and high speed, obtained with low input power at low voltage; the intended application is to substitute the moving-coil in analogic instrumentation.     

A simple bidirectional linear microactuator for nanopositioning--the "Baltan" microactuator

A new linear microactuator, using bulk PZT and electro-discharge-machined components, generates a sliding velocity and force of 100 mm/s and 12 mN, respectively, in either direction, and a peak velocity and force of 212 mm/s and 44 mN, respectively. Using a simple combination of two slightly different beams placed in contact with a slider, and vibrated at two different resonance frequencies, 508 and 522 kHz, by a specially designed, axially vibrating piezoelectric element, bidirectional linear motion was obtained. By simply reducing the length of the applied signal, the sliding distance was reduced to 90 nm +/- 2 nm, which could be improved with a variety of control methods. The design offers not only silent operation, slider clamping upon removal of power, and all of the other advantages of piezoelectric actuators, but also the potential to be further reduced in size to sub-mm3 for microrobotics and other applications.     

A smooth impact rotation motor using a multi-layered torsional piezoelectric actuator

A smooth impact rotation motor was fabricated and successfully operated using a torsional piezo actuator. Yoshida et al. reported a linear type smooth impact motor in 1997. This linear motor demonstrated a high output force and a long stroke. A superior feature of the smooth impact drive is a high positioning resolution compared with an impact drive. The positioning resolution of SIDM (smooth impact drive mechanism) is equal to the piezo displacement. The reported positioning resolution of the linear type was 5 nm. Our rotation motor utilized a torsional actuator containing multi-layered piezoelectric material. The torsional actuator was cylindrical in shape with an outer diameter of 15 mm, an inner diameter of 10 mm, and a length of 11 mm. Torsional vibration performance was measured with a laser Doppler vibrometer. The obtained torsional displacement agreed with the calculated values and was sufficient to drive a rotor. The rotor was operated with a saw-shaped input voltage (180 V; 8 kHz). The revolution direction was reversible. The maximum revolution speed was 27 rpm, and the maximum output torque was 56 gfcm. In general, smooth-impact drives do not show high efficiency; however, the level of efficiency of our results (max., 0.045%) could be increased by improving the contact surface material. In addition, we are studying quantitative consideration, for example, about the optimum pre-load or frictional force.     

Development of a novel ultrasonic motor resonator using topology optimization

The use of topology optimization in the design of a novel stator for an ultrasonic motor (USM) is investigated. The design challenge is to produce a stator, with two resonant modes whose frequencies are in a ratio of 1:2. When driven together, these modes result in a contact point trajectory in a figure of eight shape. As a result, only one electronic amplifier is required to drive the proposed device. In contrast traditional travelling wave USM, with elliptical contact point trajectories, require two modes with equal resonant frequencies to be driven 90° out of phase, and therefore require two amplifiers, one for each mode. To achieve a suitable stator design, a slightly unconventional topology optimization problem formulation is proposed, in which the objective function is to minimize the amount of material with intermediate density, while satisfying a constraint related to the frequency ratio of selected resonant modes. The planar design produced using the optimization procedure was refined using a detailed three dimensional finite element analysis. A prototype of the proposed stator design was manufactured and experimentally characterized. Scanning laser vibrometry measurements from two positions were used to measure the figure of-eight motion. Finally, the stator was fitted with a preloaded slider to form a simple linear motor demonstrator which was characterized experimentally. The prototype motor produced a slider speed of 14 mm/s reversibly and a maximum force of 50 mN.     

Ultrasonic linear motor using surface acoustic waves

The first success in the operation of an ultrasonic linear motor at HF band driving frequency using the Rayleigh wave is described. The substrate material is a 127.8° Y-cut LiNbO₃ wafer whose diameter is three inches. Four interdigital transducers (IDT's) are arranged to excite x- and y-propagation waves in both directions. The dimensions of the IDT are 25 mm aperture size, 400 μm pitch, 100 μm strip width, and 10 pairs. The operation area is about 25 mm square, The driving frequency is about 9.6 MHz in the x direction and about 9.1 MHz in the y direction. The most important point of the success is the shape of the contact surface and slider materials. For the contact materials, small balls about 1 mm in diameter are introduced to obtain sufficient contact pressure around 100 MPa. The use of ruby balls, steel balls, and tungsten carbide balls is investigated. Each slider has three balls to enable stable contact at three points. The maximum transfer speed is about 20 cm/s. The transfer speed is controllable by changing the driving voltage     

尺蠖型压电直线驱动器的运动稳定性分析

为了深入研究尺蠖型压电驱动器的性能,分析了尺蠖型压电直线驱动器的工作原理,研究了直线动子对驱动器性能的影响．通过实验方法分析了钳位机构调整前后对钳住稳定性的影响．采用驱动器输出单步位移的步距失稳系数和驱动电压与输出位移拟合曲线斜率和截距偏差率的方法评价尺蠖型压电直线驱动器的运动稳定性．经实验测试发现驱动器的步距失稳系数与驱动电压关系密切,当驱动电压较高时,驱动器具有较好的步距稳定性．驱动器的驱动电压与输出位移拟合曲线斜率和截距偏差率分别为1．8％和9．07％,说明所开发的驱动器具有很好的运动稳定性．     

Design and performance testing of an ultrasonic linear motor with dual piezoelectric actuators

In this work, design and performance testing of an ultrasonic linear motor with dual piezoelectric actuator patches are studied. The motor system consists of a linear stator, a pre-load weight, and two piezoelectric actuator patches. The piezoelectric actuators are bonded with the linear elastic stator at specific locations. The stator generates propagating waves when the piezoelectric actuators are subjected to harmonic excitations. Vibration characteristics of the linear stator are analyzed and compared with finite element and experimental results. The analytical, finite element, and experimental results show agreement. In the experiments, performance of the ultrasonic linear motor is tested. Relationships between velocity and pre-load weight, velocity and applied voltage, driving force and applied voltage, and velocity and driving force are reported. The design of the dual piezoelectric actuators yields a simpler structure with a smaller number of actuators and lower stator stiffness compared with a conventional design of an ultrasonic linear motor with fully laminated piezoelectric actuators.     

The Simulation of Diaphragm Deflection Actuated by Shear Mode Piezoelectric Actuator in Microdroplet Ejector

A shear mode piezoelectric actuator is applied to deflect the diaphragm of pressure chamber in the droplet ejector or inkjet printhead. The deflection of the bulge-diaphragm and resulting swept volume is analyzed by analytical and numerical method. With free-body treatment of the model, the analytical exact solutions for the two free bodies of bulge-diaphragm and piezoelectric beam were obtained. Also, the numerical solution by ANSYS is obtained to verify the analytical result. Besides, the whole-model solution coupling the bulge-diaphragm and piezoelectric beam together was obtained by ANSYS to compare with the result of free-body analysis. In order to estimate the maximum actuating force and deflection of the shear mode piezoelectric actuator, the diaphragm characteristic curve is obtained in the free-body analysis, which presents the decreasing tendency of the central deflection with the increase of anti-deflection (or reaction) force under certain actuating voltage. Also, the diaphragm characteristic curve is obtained showing the central deflection in proportion to the action force. By combining both kinds of curves, the actuated central deflection of the bulge-diaphragm can be obtained under certain actuating voltage. Finally, both linear relations including diaphragm central deflection in proportion to actuating voltage and volume displacement in proportion to diaphragm central deflection are obtained.     

Modeling of a rotary motor driven by an anisotropic piezoelectric composite laminate

This paper proposes an analytical model of a rotary motor driven by an anisotropic piezoelectric composite laminate. The driving element of the motor is a three-layer laminated plate. A piezoelectric layer is sandwiched between two anti-symmetric composite laminae. Because of the material anisotropy and the anti-symmetric configuration, torsional vibration can be induced through the inplane strain actuated by the piezoelectric layer. The advantages of the motor are its magnetic field immunity, simple structure, easy maintenance, low cost, and good low-speed performance. In this paper, the motor is considered to be a coupled dynamic system. The analytical model includes the longitudinal and torsional vibrations of the laminate and the rotating motion of the rotor under action of contact forces. The analytical model can predict the overall characteristics of the motor, including the modal frequency and the response of motion of the laminate, the rotating speed of the rotor, the input power, the output power, and the efficiency of the motor. The effects of the initial compressive force, the applied voltage, the moment of rotor inertia, and the frictional coefficient of the contact interface on the characteristics of the motor are simulated and discussed. A selection of the numerical results from the analytical model is confirmed by experimental data.     

L-shaped piezoelectric motor--part I: design and experimental analysis

This paper proposes an L-shaped piezoelectric motor consisting of two piezoelectric bimorphs of different lengths arranged perpendicularly to each other. The coupling of the bending vibration mode of the bimorphs results in an elliptical motion at the tip. A detailed finite element model was developed to optimize the dimensions of bimorph to achieve an effective coupling at the resonance frequency of 246 Hz. The motor was characterized by developing rotational and linear stages. The linear stage was tested with different friction contact surfaces and the maximum velocity was measured to be 12 mm/s. The rotational stage was used to obtain additional performance characteristics from the motor: maximum velocity of 120 rad/s, mechanical torque of 4.7 × 10-(5) N·m, and efficiency of 8.55%.     

Bioinspired aquatic microrobot capable of walking on water surface like a water strider

Walking on the water surface is a dream of humans, but it is exactly the way of life for some aquatic insects. In this study, a bionic aquatic microrobot capable of walking on the water surface like a water strider was reported. The novel water strider-like robot consisted of ten superhydrophobic supporting legs, two miniature dc motors, and two actuating legs. The microrobot could not only stand effortlessly but also walk and turn freely on the water surface, exhibiting an interesting motion characteristic. A numerical model describing the interface between the partially submerged leg and the air-water surface was established to fully understand the mechanism for the large supporting force of the leg. It was revealed that the radius and water contact angle of the legs significantly affect the supporting force. Because of its high speed, agility, low cost, and easy fabrication, this microrobot might have a potential application in water quality surveillance, water pollution monitoring, and so on.     

Modeling of a piezoelectric rotary ultrasonic motor

A piezoelectric rotary ultrasonic motor is modeled for the purpose of predicting, a priori, motor performance as a function of design parameters. The Rayleigh-Ritz assumed mode energy method is used to model the distributed piezoceramics and the traveling wave dynamics of the stator. Natural frequencies and modeshapes are obtained for a generally configured motor. Nonlinear normal and tangential interface forces between the rotor and stator are incorporated into the forcing function along with the linear piezoelectric forcing. Given the applied torque, applied axial loading, and piezo drive voltages as inputs to the model, general motor performance measures are obtained-namely speed, input power, output power, and efficiency. The approach presented here provides a general framework for modeling these motors as well as a design tool for optimizing prototypes with the added flexibility of allowing for a wide variety of geometries and materials     

Coupled tangential-axial resonant modes of piezoelectric hollow cylinders and their application in ultrasonic motors

This paper describes a tangential-axial eigen-mode of a piezoelectric hollow cylinder. A new type of piezoelectric ultrasonic motor using this oscillation mode has been developed. The motor is a traveling-wave-type motor. The stator of such a motor consists of a solid piezoelectric hollow cylinder, which, excited in the tangential-axial resonant mode by a three-phase electrical signal, will exhibit elliptical displacement and transfer rotation to the rotor. The behavior of the stator has been simulated with finite element method (FEM) software. The simulation results have been checked with single-point contact measurements on the surface of the ultrasonic motors. The paper closes with the introduction of new ultrasonic motors based on this oscillation mode.