Investigation of actuating displacement performance of curved actuator by large-scale computation

In this paper, the electromechanical displacements of curved actuators such as THUNDER are calculated by the finite-element method to design the optimal configuration of curved actuators. To predict the internal stress in the device due to the mismatch in coefficients of thermal expansion, the adhesive as well as metal and PZT ceramic is also numerically modeled by using hexahedral solid elements. Also, the nonlinear finite-element formulation is implemented to include the variation of material constants during the curing process and acquire more accurate actuating displacements. Because the modeling of these thin layers causes the numbers of degree of freedom to increase, large-scale structural analyses are performed in a cluster system in this study. The curved shape and internal stress in the actuator are obtained by the cured curvature analysis, and the displacement subject to the piezoelectric force by an applied voltage is also calculated to investigate the performance of curved actuators. The thickness of metals and adhesive, and the number of metal layers, are chosen as design variables.

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