• Composites Research
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.47-51
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• 2014

The purpose of the present study is to develop lightweight and simple smart actuators in order to replace conventional hydraulic/pneumatic actuators, and to apply the developed actuators to the actuation systems of a small unmanned air vehicle. This research describes the procedures of design, manufacturing of the piezo-composite actuator, and the performance evaluation. From the test results of the developed devices, we found the possibility of piezo-composite actuator could be used as a control surface of a small UAV system. We have designed and manufactured two kinds of piezo-composite actuators, unimorph actuator and bimorph actuator. The manufactured actuators were evaluated through the performance testes. It was found that the bimorph type actuator showed more linear angle change for the same excitation voltage variation than unimorph type. It is expected that piezo-composite actuator has a possibility to be used not only as a control surface of small unmanned flying vehicle but also as a control surface actuator of a guided missile fin through the miniaturization of power supply and control system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society For Composite Materials Conference
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• 2001.05a
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• pp.126-129
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• 2001

LIPCA (LIghtweight Piezo-composite Curved Actuator) is an actuator device which is lighter than other conventional piezoelectric ceramic type actuator. LIPCA is composed of a piezoelectric ceramic layer and fiber reinforced light composite layers, typically a PZT ceramic layer is sandwiched by a top fiber layer with low CTE (coefficient of thermal expansion) and base layers with high CTE. LIPCA has curved shape like a typical THUNDER (thin-layer composite unimorph feroelectric driver and sensor), but it is lighter an than THUNDER. Since the curved shape of LIPCA is from the thermal deformation during the manufacturing process of unsymmetrically laminated lay-up structure, an analysis for the thermal deformation and residual stresses induced during the manufacturing process is very important for an optimal design to increase the performance of LIPCA. To investigate the thermal deformation behavior and the induced residual stresses of LIPCA at room temperature, the curvatures of LIPCA were measured and compared with those predicted from the analysis using the classical lamination theory. A methodology is being studied to find an optimal stacking sequence and geometry of LIPCA to have larger specific actuating displacement and higher force. The residual stresses induced during the cooling process of the piezo-composite actuators have been calculated. A lay-up geometry for the PZT ceramic layer to have compression stress in the geometrical principal direction has been designed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.94-100
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• 2002

This paper is concerned with the development, and performance test of LIPCA (Lightweight Piezo-composite Curved Actuator) that is lighter than other conventional piezo-composite type actuators. LIPCA is composed of top fiber composite layers with a high modulus and low CTE (Coefficient of Thermal Expansion), a middle PZT cermaic wafer, and base layers with a high modulus and high CTE. The performance of each actuator was evaluated using an actuator test system consisting of an actuator supporting jig, a high voltage actuating power supplier, and a non-contact laser measuring system. The simply supported condition actuator was excited by the power supplier with 1.0Hz cycle and up to $100\sim400V_{pp}$. The displacement at the center point of actuator was measured with non-contact laser displacement measuring system, It has been shown that the LIPCA-C2 can 34% decrease in mass and 13% increase in displacement compared to THUNDER.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.9
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• pp.869-874
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• 2010

Recently, a piezo actuator based linear motor has been actively studied because of its higher power density, compactness and quick response. However, the characteristic of small displacement makes the application of a piezo actuator limitative. In order to overcome this limitation, some actuation mechanisms using a piezo actuator are designed by bi-metal composite or more than two piezo actuators. Therefore, it enables to generate large displacement and have high resolution. In the proposed piezo motor, we have designed a bi-directional linear motor that can be operated by only one piezo actuator. In addition, it is activated with low frequency of the applied voltage, since, we utilize first mode shape of structure of motion generator to vibrate. Finally, moving direction can be simply controlled by changing the ratio of input frequency to natural frequency of structure of motion generator.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.69-77
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• 2011

A peristaltic micropump with lightweight piezo-composite actuator (LIPCA) membrane valves is presented. The micropump contained three cylinder chambers that were connected by microchannels and two active membrane valves. A circular miniature LIPCA was developed and manufactured to be used as actuating diaphragms. The LIPCA diaphragm acted as an active membrane valve that alternate between open and closed positions at the inlet and outlet in order to produce high pumping pressure. In this LIPCA, a lead zirconium titanate ceramic with a thickness of 0.1 mm was used as an active layer. The results confirmed that the actuator produced a large out-of-plane deflection. During the design process, a coupled field analysis was conducted in order to predict the actuating behavior of the LIPCA diaphragm; the behavior of the actuator was investigated from both a theoretical and experimental perspective. The active membrane valve concept was introduced as a means for increasing pumping pressure, and microelectromechanical system techniques were used to fabricate the peristaltic micropump. The pumping performance was analyzed experimentally in terms of the flow rate, pumping pressure and power consumption.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.207-210
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• 2002

This paper is concerned with the experiments on the active vibration control of a plate with piezoceramic sensors and actuators. The natural frequencies of the composite plate featured by a piezo-film sensor and piezo-ceramic actuator are calculated by using the modal analysis method. Modal coordinates are introduced to obtain the state equations of the structural system. Six natural frequencies were considered in the modelling, because robust control theory which has inherent robustness to structured uncertainty is adopted to suppress the transients vibrations of a glass fiber reinforced(GFR) composite beam. A robust controller satisfying the nominal performance and robust performance is designed using robust theory based on the structured singular value. Simulations were carried out with the designed controller and effectiveness of the robust control strategy was verified by results.

• Composites Research
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.41-47
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• 2003

This paper is concerned with the performance evaluation and comparison analysis fur several kinds of LIPCA (Lightweight Piezo-Composite Actuator) device system. LIPCA device system is composed of a piezoelectric ceramic layer and fiber reinforced light composite layers, typically a PZT ceramic layer was sandwiched by a top fiber layer with low CTE (coefficient of thermal expansion) and base layers with high CTE. To investigate the effect of lay-up structure of the LIPCA on the actuating performance, four kinds of actuator with different lay-up stacking sequence were designed, manufactured, and tested. The performance of each actuator was evaluated using an actuator test system consisted of an actuator supporting jig, a high voltage actuating power supplier, and a non-contact laser measuring system. From the comparison of the performance of the LIPCA prototypes, it was found that the actuator with higher coefficient of unimorph actuator can generate larger actuating displacement.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.25 no.10
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• pp.1514-1519
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• 2001

This paper is concerned with design, manufacturing and performance test of LIPCA ( Lightweight Piezo- composite Curved Actuator) using a top carbon fiber composite layer with near -zero CTE(coefficient of thermal expansion), a middle PZT ceramic wafer and a bottom glass/epoxy layer with high CTE. The main point of this design is to replace the heavy metal layers of THUNDER by thigh tweight fiber reinforced plastic layers without losing capabilities to generate high force and large displacement. It is possible to save weight up to about 30% if we replace the metallic backing material by the light fiber composite layer. We can also have design flexibility by selecting the fiber direction and the size of prepreg layers. In addition to the lightweight advantage and design flexibility, the proposed device can be manufactured without adhesive layers when we use epoxy resin prepreg system. Glass/epoxy prepregs, a ceramic wafer with electrode surfaces, and a graphite/epoxy prepreg were simply stacked and cured at an elevated temperature (177 $^{circ}C$ after following an autoclave bagging process. It was found that the manufactured composite laminate device had a sufficient curvature after detached from a flat mold. The analysis method of the cure curvature of LIPCA using the classical lamination theory is presented. The predicted curvatures are fairly in agreement with the experimental ones. In order to investigate the merits of LIPCA, a performance test of both LIPCA and THUNDE$^{TM}$ were conducted under the same boundary conditions. From the experimental actuation tests, it was observed that the developed actuator could generate larger actuation displacement than THUNDERT$^{TM}$.

• Composites Research
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.15-20
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• 2017

In this study, LIPCA-S2 actuator with a piezoelectric single crystal layer and a carbon/epoxy layer was designed and evaluated to increase actuation performance of piezo-composite unimorph actuator. A curvature change model generated by the induced strain of a piezoelectric layer was used to predict the tip displacement of the piezo-composite unimorph cantilever. However, we found that there was big difference between the predicted and the measured tip displacement of LIPCA-S2 cantilever actuator when we used the previous linear prediction model. A new prediction model considering the change of piezoelectric strain coefficient and elastic modulus for the compression stress variation of the PMN-29PT single crystal layer was used and it was found that the difference between the predicted and the measured tip displacement reduced considerably.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.666-675
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• 2002

Piezoelectric Fiber Composites with Interdigitated Electrodes (PFCIDE) were previously introduced as an alternative to monolithic wafers with conventional electrodes for applications of structural actuation. This paper is an investigation into the performance improvement of piezoelectric fiber composite actuators by changing the matrix material. This paper presents a modified micro-electromechanical model and numerical analyses of piezoelectric fiber/piezopolymer matrix composite actuator with interdigitated electrodes (PFPMIDE). Various concepts from different backgrounds including three-dimensional linear elastic and dielectric theories have been incorporated into the present linear piezoelectric model. The rule of mixture and the modified method to calculate effective properties of fiber composites were extended to apply to the PFPMIDE model. The new model was validated when compared with available experimental data and other analytical results. To see the structural responses of a composite plate integrated with the PFPMIDE, three-dimensional finite element formulations were derived. Numerical analyses show that the shape of the graphite/epoxy composite plate with the PFPMIDE may be controlled by judicious choice of voltages, piezoelectric fiber angles, and elastic tailoring of the composite plate.