• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.541-549
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• 2007

This work describes an investigation into the feasibility of using an acoustic emission (AE) technique to evaluate the integrity of a composite actuator with a PZT ceramic under electromechanical cyclic loading. AE characteristics have been analyzed in terms of the behavior of the AE count rate and signal waveform in association with the performance degradation of the composite actuator during the cyclic tests. The results showed that the fatigue cracking of the composite actuator with a PZT ceramic occurred only in the PZT ceramic layer, and that the performance degradation caused by the fatigue damage varied immensely depending on the existence of a protecting composite bottom layer. We confirmed the correlations between the fatigue damage mechanisms and AE signal types for the actuators that exhibited multiple modes of fatigue damage; transgranular micro damage, intergranular fatigue cracking, and breakdown by a short circuiting were related to a burst type signal showing a shortly rising and slowly decaying waveform with a comparably low voltage, a continuous type signal showing a gradual rising and slowly decaying waveform with a very high voltage and a burst and continuous type signal with a high voltage, respectively. Results from the present work showed that the evolution of fatigue damage in the composite actuator with a PZT ceramic can be nondestructively identified via in situ AE monitoring and microscopic observations.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.151-161
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• 2018

A new type of cascade sandwiched piezoelectric ultrasonic transducer is presented and studied. The cascade transducer is composed of two traditional longitudinally sandwiched piezoelectric transducers, which are connected together in series mechanically and in parallel electrically. Based on the analytical method, the electromechanical equivalent circuit of the cascade transducer is derived and the resonance/anti-resonance frequency equations are obtained. The impedance characteristics and the vibrational modes of the transducer are analyzed. By means of numerical method, the dependency of the resonance/anti-resonance frequency and the effective electromechanical coupling coefficient on the geometrical dimensions of the cascade transducer are studied and some interesting conclusions are obtained. Two prototypes of the cascade transducers are designed and made; the resonance/anti-resonance frequency is measured. It is shown that the analytical resonance/anti-resonance frequencies are in good agreement with the experimental results. It is expected that this kind of cascade transducer can be used in large power and high intensity ultrasonic applications, such as ultrasonic liquid processing, ultrasonic metal machining and ultrasonic welding and soldering.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.811-830
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• 2014

A numerical study has been carried out to simulate an innovative monitoring procedure to detect and localize damage in reinforced concrete beams retrofitted with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) unidirectional laminates. The main novelty of the present simulation is its ability to conduct the electromechanical admittance monitoring technique by considerably compressing the amount of data required for damage detection and localization. A FEM simulation of electromechanical admittance-based sensing technique was employed by applying lead zirconate titanate (PZT) transducers to acquire impedance spectrum signatures. Response surface methodology (RSM) is finally adopted as a tool for solving inverse problems to estimate the location and size of damaged areas from the relationship between damage and electromechanical admittance changes computed at PZT transducer surfaces. This statistical metamodel technique allows polynomial models to be produced without requiring complicated modeling or numerous data sets after the generation of damage, leading to considerably lower cost of creating diagnostic database. Finally, a numerical example is carried out regarding a steel-reinforced concrete (RC) beam model monotonically loaded up to its failure which is also retrofitted by a CFRP laminate to verify the validity of the present metamodeling monitoring technique. The load-carrying capacity of concrete is predicted in the present paper by utilizing an Ottosen-type failure surface in order to better take into account the passive confinement behavior of retrofitted concrete material under the application of FRP laminate.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.434-440
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• 2013

With polymer properties and ceramic volume fraction as design variables, the optimal structure of 1-3 piezocomposites has been determined to maximize the thickness mode electromechanical coupling factor. When the piezocomposite vibrates in a thickness mode, inter-pillar resonant modes are likely to occur between lattice-structured piezoceramic pillars and polymer matrix, which significantly deteriorates the performance of the piezocomposite. In this work, a new method to design the structure of the 1-3 type piezocomposite is proposed to maximize the thickness mode electromechanical coupling factor while preventing the occurrence of the inter-pillar modes. Genetic algorithm was used for the optimal design, and the finite element analysis method was used for the analysis of the inter-pillar mode.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2002.08a
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• pp.146-149
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• 2002

In this study, 2-2 type piezocomposites were made and characteristics as volume fraction of PZT were investigated. The accoustic impedance of 2-2 piezoelectric composites was linearly decreased with decreasing PZT volume fraction. when the volume fraction of PZT was 0.2 the acoustic impedance was 3.2 Mrayl. The electromechanical coupling factor was favourable in comparison with the single phase PZT, and that was about uniformed about 0.68 in the 0.2 to 0.6 of PZT volume fraction.

• Advances in robotics research
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2014

Microgripper is an essential device in the micro-operation system. It can convert other types of energy into mechanical energy and produce clamp movement with required chucking force, which enables it a broad application prospect in the domain of tiny components' processing and assembly, biomedicine and optics, etc. The performance of a microgripper is dependent on its power supply, type of drive, mechanism structure, sensing components, and controller. This paper presents a state-of-the-art survey of recent development on flexure-based microgrippers. According to the drive type, the existing microgrippers can be mainly classified as electrostatic microgripper, electrothermal microgripper, electromagnetic microgripper, piezoelectric microgripper, and shape memory alloy microgripper. Additionally, some different mechanisms, sensors, and control methods that are used in microgripper system are reviewed. The key issue of how to choose those components in microgripper system design is also addressed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.17-21
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• 1972

There are two kinds of tile dial Keyserider which is used in recently, one is a electromechanical relay type, the other is a mechanical type. It is, however, that above types are very high cost to manufacture. therefore it is desinged a new type by using the transistor switching circuit so that it is small size and can be manufactured lower cost than other types.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.53-53
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• 2008

Piezoelectric transformers have been widely used such as DC-DC convertor, invertor, Ballast, etc. Because, the y have some merits compared with electro-magnetic transformers such as step-up ratio, high efficiency, small size and lg hit weight, etc. Piezoelectric transformer require high electromechanical coupling factor kp in order to induce a large out put power in proportional to applied electric field. And also, high mechanical quality factor Qm is required to prevent mechanical loss and heat generation. In general, PZT system ceramics should be sintered at high temperatures between 1200 and $1300^{\circ}C$ in order to obtain complete densification. Accordingly, environmental pollution due to its PbO evaporation. Hence, to reduce its sintering temperature, various kinds of material processing methods such as hot pressing, high energy mill, liquid phase sintering, and using ultra fine powder have been performed. Among these methods, liquid phase sintering is basically an effective method for aiding densification at low temperature. In this study, In order to comparis on low temperature sintering and solid state sintering piezoelectric transformers, rosen type transformers were fabricated u sing two PZT ceramics compositions and their electrical properties were investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.70-76
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• 2017

The pollution problem of fossil energy sources has caused the development of green energy harvesting systems. Piezoelectric energy harvesting technology has been developed under those external environmental factors. A piezoelectric energy harvester can be defined as a device which transforms mechanical vibration or impact energy into electrical energy. Most researches have focused on bender structures. However, these have a limitation on energy efficiency because of the small effective electromechanical coupling factor, around 10%. Therefore, we should look for a new design for energy harvesting. A cymbal energy harvester can be a good candidate for the high-power energy harvester because it uses a high amplification mechanism using endcaps while keeping a higher electromechanical coupling factor. In this research, we focused on energy efficiency improvements of the cymbal energy harvester by changing the polarization direction, because the electromechanical coupling factor of the k33 mode and the k15 mode is larger than that of the k31 mode. Theoretically, we checked the cymbal harvester with radial polarization and it could obtain 6 times larger energy than that with the k31 direction polarization. Furthermore, we verified the theoretical expectation using the finite element method program. Consequently, we could expect a more efficient cymbal harvester with the radial polarization by comparing two polarization directions.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.354-360
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• 2002

The piezoelectric composites had many advantages in comparison with conventional piezoelectric ceramics and piezopolymers for ultrasonic transducers used in NDT and in medical ultrasionic imaging. The electromechanical coupling coefficient should be high and the acoustic impedance should be low in these applications. However, the cross-coupling with spurious oscillations caused by laterally running plate waves exhibited complex motions in the surface of piezoelectric composites with coarse lateral spatial scale. The thickness mode electromechanical coupling coefficient of 1-3type of piezoelectric compoistes were 0.36 to 0.64, and the acoustic impedance of them were 9.8 to 22.7 MRayl. The lateral resonance frequency of 1-3 type piezoelectric composites shifted to high frequency region with decreasing lateral spatial scale.