Investigations of electronic amplifiers supplying a piezobimorph actuator

Abstract Piezoelectric bending actuators, also known as bimorphs, are characterized by very good dynamic properties and by displacements in a range of a few millimeters. Therefore these actuators are used in a wide range of applications. However their usage is limited because they require supplying amplifiers with output voltage of about 200 V, which are rather expensive. This paper presents investigation results of such amplifiers with high voltage output. The model of a piezobending actuator is proposed and implemented in Matlab-Simulink software in order to simulate the behavior of the actuator supplied by the amplifiers. The simulation results are presented and compared with investigation results of high voltage amplifier used for supplying a piezoactuator. The influence of current limitation of operational amplifier on the actuator current is tested. Finally, a low cost audio power amplifier is proposed to control the piezobender actuator (as a cheaper alternative to the high-voltage amplifier) and its investigations results are presented in the paper.

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