In recent years, traditional piezoelectric materials have been pushed to the limit in terms of performance because of countless novel applications. This has caused an increased interest in piezoelectric composites, which combine two or more constituent materials in order to create a material system that incorporates favorable attributes from each constituent. One or more of the constituents exhibits piezoelectric behavior, so that the composite has an effective electromechanical coupling. The composite material may also have enhanced properties such as stiffness, durability, and flexibility. Finite element analyses were conducted on a three-phase piezoelectric nanocomposite in order to investigate the effects of several design parameters on performance. The nanocomposite consisted of a polyimide matrix, beta-CN APB/ODPA, enhanced with single wall carbon nanotubes and PZT-5A particles. The polyimide and nan- otube phases were modeled as a single homogenized phase. This results in a two-phase nanocomposite that can be modeled entirely in the continuum domain. The material properties for the nano-reinforced matrix and PZT-5A were obtained from previous experimental efforts and from the literature. The finite element model consisted of a single representative volume element of the two-phase nanocomposite. Exact periodic boundary conditions were derived and used to minimize the analysis region. The effective mechanical, electrical, and piezoelectric properties were computed for a wide range of nanotube and PZT particle concentrations. A discrepancy was found between the experimental results from the literature and the computational results for the effective electrical properties. Several modified finite element models were developed to explore possible reasons for this discrepancy, and a hypothesis involving dispersion of the nanotubes was formulated as an attempt to explain the difference. The response of the nanocomposite under harmonic loading was also investigated using the finite element model. The effective properties were found to be highly dependent on the dielectric loss of the beta CN/SWNT matrix. It was also found that increasing the matrix loss enhanced piezoelectric performance up to a certain point. Exploiting this type of behavior could be an effective tool in designing piezoelectric composite materials.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 118-124).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 176-189). Also available in electronic version.

Thesis Presented for the Degree of Magister Technologiae in the Department of Electrical Engineering Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2006 / Because of the nature of piezoelectric ceramics and the physical construction pf high power piezoelectric transducers, such devices are inherently non-linear and become unpredictable when driven at high power. To drive an ultrasonic transducer or an array thereof efficiently, specific resonant points are used. These poin~s are characterised by the devices' mechanical modes of oscillation. At high electrical power levels, the resonance points of PZT transducers vary. The movement of the resonances points in the frequency domain, coupled with the transducers high Q, is severe enough to seriously hamper the devices' efficiency. The problem is specifically apparent when multiple transducer arrays are driven at power. The electrical fluctuations and interactions of the characteristics of separate transducers cause arrays to be driven efficiently at a single resonance point. To efficiently drive an array of PZT transducers it is necessary to employ a .suitable technique. Although several methods exist in the literature, each is designed for a specific configuration of transducers and dedicated matching circuitry. The fundamental flaw in most methods is that they are conceived with the assumption all PZT transducers are identical and can be driven as such. Inherent nonlinearities caused by poling and construction methods, result in each transducer to be slightly different causing a superposition of resonance frequencies for each transducer array. Existing methods cannot be used to efficiently drive generic transducer arrays and a novel approach has been adopted to accommodate transducer nonlinearities. This novel approach can be described as a culmination of two driving techniques and has been named, Swept Frequency Dwelling (SFD). This thesis examines five different driving techniques and quantifies their effectiveness by means of experimental evaluation proficiencies. The driving techniques are grouped into two categories - straight driving techniques and frequency sweeping techniques - which are compared and evaluated. In conclusion, a novel method for driving ultrasonic transducer arrays was established with the aim of eliminating some detrimental effects of other driving techniques, while exploiting some of their positive attributes and was found to be effective.

Thesis (MTech (Mechanical Engineering))--Peninsula Technikon, Cape Town, 2002 / Distributed Piezoelectric Actuator (DPA) is one kind of actuator in the smart technology field. Firstly, DPA is one kind of solid-state actuator, and can be embedded in the structure. Secondly, it can be controlled by the electrical signal with high bandwidth and high precision. So it can be applied in the many different fields, such as high-resolution positioning, noise and vibration detection and shape control. Up to now, all of the DPA theory investigations and the product designs are based on applying the approximate electrical field. And only the rectangular shape DPA has been studied. The accurate distribution and intensity of electrical and mechanics field, and the numerical imitation for the DPA products with rectangular and other shapes have never been discussed and studied. Therefore, the development of DPA to be used in the micro application, such as in the Micro Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS), has been limited. This thesis has developed the analytical analysis models for two types of DPA elements and the part circular shape DPA element. The MathCAD and MATLAB program have been used to develop the analytical models. The ABAQUS program has also been used to compare the results between the analytical models and Finite Element Method (FEM). Finally, the accuracy and reliability of analytical models have been proved by results comparison between the analytical models, FEM and the product testing data from the industry. This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction of smart structure. The characterizations of constituent materials, including the piezoelectric material and matrix epoxy material have been discussed in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, the analytical models for two type of DPA element have been developed and the comparisons have also been completed. The analytical models for part circular shape DPA element have been developed in Chapter 4. The conclusions and recommendations are included in Chapter 5.

Micro-assembly is of crucial importance in industry nowadays. Nevertheless, currently applied processes require improvements. Indeed, when dealing with the assembly of submillimetric components, usually neglected surface forces disturb the manipulation task. They are responsible for the component sticking to the gripper, because of downscaling laws. A promising strategy to tackle adhesion consists in working without contact. The present dissertation is focused on contactless handling with acoustic levitation. The advantages of contactless handling, the physical principles suitable for levitation and their applications are detailed. The opportunity for new handling strategies are shown. Acoustic levitation appears as the most fitted principle for micro-assembly. The elements to model acoustic forces are analysed and performances of existing modellings are assessed. A general numerical model of acoustic forces is implemented and theoretically validated with literature benchmarks. A fully automated modular levitator prototype is designed and used to experimentally validate the implemented numerical model. Specific instrumentations and protocols are developed for the acoustic force measurements. The numerical model is finally applied to the real levitator. Modelling results are used to support experimental observations: the optimisation of the levitator resonance, the influence of the reflector shape, the dynamical study of the component oscillations, the stability with lateral centring forces and rotation torques, the component insertion and extraction from the levitator, the effect of pressure harmonics on the acoustic forces, and the manipulation of non spherical components. Acoustic forces are experimentally measured and a very good agreement with the modellings is obtained. Consequently, the implemented simulation tool can successfully be applied to a complex manipulation task with a component of any shape in a real levitator.

In this thesis, the author presents a numerical and experimental study of the application of active constrained layer damping to a clamped-clamped plate. Piezoelectric actuators with modal controllers are used to improve the performance of vibration suppression from the passive constrained layer damping treatment. Surface damping treatments are often effective at suppressing higher frequency vibrations in thin-walled structures such as beams, plates and shells. However, the effective suppression of lower frequency modes usually requires the additional of an active vibration control scheme to augment the passive treatment. Advances in the technologies associated with so-called smart materials are dramatically reducing the cost, weight and complexity of active structural control and make it feasible to consider active schemes in an increasing number of applications. Specifically, a passive constrained layer damping treatment is enhanced with an active scheme employing a piezoceramic (PZT) patch as the actuator. Starting with an established finite element formulation it is shown how model updating and model reduction are required to produce a low-order state-space model which can be used as the basis for active control. The effectiveness of the formulation is then demonstrated in a numerical study. Finally, in the description of the experimental study it is shown how modes in the frequency range from 0 to 600 Hz are effectively suppressed: the two lowest modes (bending and torsional) through active control, the higher modes (around ten in number) by the passive constrained damping layer. The study'S original contribution lies in the experimental demonstration that given a sufficiently accurate model of the plate and passive constrained damping layer, together with a suitable active feedback control algorithm, spillover effects are not significant even when using a single sensor and single actuator. The experimental traces show, in some instances, minor effects due to spillover. However, it can be concluded that the presence of the passive layer introduces sufficient damping into the residual modes to avoid any major problems when using only the minimum amount of active control hardware.

The field of smart materials is an increasingly growing area of research. In aerodynamics applications especially, transducers have to fulfill a series of requirements such as light weight, size, energy consumption, robustness and durability. Piezoelectric transducers, devices which transform an electrical signal into motion, fulfill many of these requirements. Specifically, piezoelectric composites are of interest due to their added toughness and ease of integration into a structure. Resulting composites have a characteristic initial curvature with accompanying residual stresses that are responsible for enhanced performance, relative to flat actuators, when the active material is energized. A number of transducer designs based on composites have been developed. Two of these piezoelectric composites called Thunder® and Lipca are analyzed. Thunder is a composite of steel, polyimide adhesive, PZT, polyimide adhesive, and aluminum; and Lipca is a composite of fiberglass epoxy, carbon/epoxy, PZT, and fiberglass epoxy.Room temperature shapes of circular and rectangular Thunder® and Lipca actuators are predicted by using the Rayleigh-Ritz model. This technique is based on the assumption that the stable geometric configuration developed in the actuator after manufacturing, is the configuration that minimizes the total potential energy. This energy is a function of the displacement field which can be approximated by two functions, a four term model, and a twenty-three term model. The coefficients in the models are determined by minimizing the total potential energy of the actuator. The actuator deformations are assumed to obey the Kirchhoff hypothesis and the actuator layers are assumed to be in the state of plane stress.The four coefficient model produces results not comparable to three-dimensional surface topology maps. The twenty-three coefficient model however, is shown to have generally good agreement with the data for all studied actuators. To quantify the difference, at the cross section of each actuator, a profile is fitted by using a quadratic equation obtaining regression coefficients above 99%. For all actuators, the error between experimental and the calculated centerline data is less than 6%. For the 6R model however, the error is approximately 25%. One of the possible reasons for the error may be the tolerance of the thickness of the PZT layer. By changing the PZT thickness ±6% of the nominal value, over predicts the experimental dome height by 20%. Another possible reason for the discrepancy is the thickness of the actuator, thicker than all actuators used in this study, which might contradict the validity of the thin actuator assumption. Furthermore, by calculating the side-length-to-thickness ratio, 115 in this case, as stated by Aimmanee & Hyer (2004), may cause instability, and could result in unexpected behavior.The neutral axis position, calculated by using a force balance at equilibrium under the assumption of pure bending, for all actuators used in this study is determined and compared to the ceramic layer position. The results indicated that for all Thunder® models the neutral axis is located below the ceramic layer indicating that the PZT wafer may be in total tension. For the Lipca C2 device however, the neutral axis is found to be above the ceramic layer, indicating that the piezoelectric layer may be in total compression.Strain fields are also predicted with contradicting results when compared to the theory that the ceramic is in tension in the Thunder actuators. The contradiction on the strain calculations can be explained by the manner the strain field is derived: by differentiating and squaring the high-order polynomials of the approximated displacement component losing accuracy when it comes to predicting normal and shear strains.The Rayleigh-Ritz technique can become a tool to perform parametric studies of the key elements for manufacturing to optimize specific features of the actuators.

Servohydraulic systems are widely used for actuation where high force and fast response are needed, and the servovalve is the type of control valve which provides the highest performance for such systems. In aerospace, servovalves are used for many safety critical systems, such as flight control, steering and braking. However, during the last fifty years the conventional two stage servovalve design for aerospace applications has hardly changed. Due to the desire for increased energy efficiency, there is a need to make valves more efficient and lighter. A new type of servovalve for aerospace applications is therefore investigated. Increased efficiency implies that leakage should be small, and other key requirements are reliability, robustness and low manufacturing cost. The aim of this research is to provide background knowledge so that in the future an improved two stage servovalve can be manufactured. The prototype valve in this research will not be lightweight, but will provide knowledge for a future researcher or manufacturer to create a light weight servovalve. A two stage servovalve was designed with a multi-layer piezoelectric ring bender actuating a low leakage small spool as a first stage to control a second stage spool with electrical position feedback. The valve body was manufactured through Additive Manufacturing. A dynamic model of the complete valve was developed and correlated with experimental data. The model included the drive amplifier for the piezoelectric ring bender, the ring bender with hysteresis, first stage spool with overlap and the second stage spool. This showed that hysteresis and overlap had a significant effect on valve behaviour. A second stage spool position controller was developed to counteract the non-linear behaviour due to the piezoelectric hysteresis and the dead-band due to the first stage overlap. The controller also includes a feed forward path to increase the bandwidth of the valve. This controller outperforms a conventional Proportional-Integral controller and is also less sensitive to amplitude change. Mounting a ring bender sufficiently stiffly so that it can generate a high blocking force, but also in such a way that the deformation and hence the free displacement of the ring bender is not constrained, is a significant challenge. An analytical model to optimize the ring bender mount has been developed. This model can be used to find the optimum mount overlap at the outer edge of the ring bender, and the optimum thickness of the mount. An extensive investigation of the durability of the ring bender in Hyjet has been completed. Hyjet is a tradename for a fire-resistant phosphate-ester hydraulic fluid commonly used in civil aerospace. The ring bender will quickly start to break down if the Hyjet reaches the electrical connections. The Hyjet will penetrate the ceramic and create an electrical circuit between the electrical connection, the Hyjet and the outermost internal electrode. The breakdown of the ring bender can probably be eliminated by protecting the ceramic with an impermeable layer of material. In this research a metallic foil applied to the surface of the ring bender was investigated.