• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.32 no.10
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• pp.856-865
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• 2008

Damage mechanisms in bending piezoelectric actuators under electric fatigue loading are addressed in this work with the aid of an acoustic emission (AE) technique. Electric cyclic fatigue tests have been performed up to $10^7$ cycles on the fabricated bending piezoelectric actuators. An applied electric loading range is from -6 kV/cm to +6 kV/cm, which is below the coercive field strength of the PZT ceramic. To confirm the fatigue damage onset and its pathway, the source location and distributions of the AE behavior in terms of count rate and amplitude are analyzed over the fatigue range. It is concluded that electric cyclic loading leads to fatigue damages such as transgranular damages and intergranular cracking in the surface of the PZT ceramic layer, and intergranular cracking even develops into the PZ inner layer, thereby degrading the displacement performance. However, this fatigue damage and cracking do not cause the final failure of the bending piezoelectric actuator loaded up to $10^7$ cycles. Investigations of the AE behavior and the linear AE source location reveal that the onset time of the fatigue damage varies considerably depending on the existence of a glass-epoxy protecting layer.