• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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$^{TM}$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society For Composite Materials Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.286-289
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• 2004

This paper presents the fatigue characteristics of LIPCA (LIghtweight Piezo-Composite Actuator) device system. The LIPCA device system is composed of a piezoelectric ceramic layer and fiber reinforced lightweight 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. The advantages of the LIPCA design are weight reduction by using the lightweight fiber reinforced plastic layers without compromising the generation of high force and large displacement and design flexibility by selecting the fiber direction and the size of prepreg layers. To predict the degradation of actuation performance of LIPCA due to fatigue, the cyclic electric loading tests using PZT specimens were performed and the strain for a given excitation voltage was measured during the test. The results from the PZT fatigue test were implemented into CLPT (Classical Laminated Plate Theory) model to predict the degradation of LIPCA's actuation displacement. The fatigue characteristic of PZT was measured using a test system composed of a supporting jig, a high voltage power supplier, data acquisition board, PC, and evaluated.

• 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.11
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• pp.1881-1886
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• 2001

A numerical method for actuating performance evaluation of LIPCA proposed using a finite element method. Fully coupled formulations for piezo-electric materials were introduced and 3-dimensional eight-node incompatible element was used. After verifying the developed code with typical examples, the center deflections of LIPCA were calculated and compared with the experimental result, which were in fairly agreement.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.218-224
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• 2007

Although piezoelectric materials such as PZT have been widely used as actuators in the field of active vibration suppression, the use of bare PZT as an actuator may cause some drawbacks such as critical breaks in the installation process, short circuits in the host material and low fatigue performance. The LIPCA-C2 (lightweight piezocomposite actuator) was developed to alleviate these problems. We implemented the LIPCA as an actuator to suppress the vibration of an aluminum cantilever beam with a tip mass. In our test, we used positive position feedback control algorithm. The filter frequency for this type of feedback should be tuned to the natural frequency of the target mode. The first three experimental natural frequencies of the aluminum cantilever beam agree well with the results of finite element analysis. The effectiveness of using the LIPCA as an actuator in active vibration suppression was investigated with respect to the time and frequency domains, and the experimental results show that LIPCAs with PPF control can significantly reduce the amplitude of forced vibrations and the settling time of free vibrations. For a case study, the forced vibration control of several beams with different thicknesses were performed.

• Advanced Composite Materials
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.327-338
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• 2009

In this paper, through an evaluation process conducted on several designs of mini-LIPCA (Lightweight Piezo-Composite curved Actuator), an optimal design of a mini-LIPCA has been proposed. Comparing with the LIPCA-C2, the design of the mini-LIPCA comes with reduced overall size and a thinner active layer. Since a variation in the number and lay-up of fiber composite layers may strongly affect the performance of the device, one is able to configure several designs of mini-LIPCA. The evaluation process is then followed in order to determine a configuration which characterizes the possibly optimal performance. That is, a design of a mini-LIPCA is said to be optimal if it is capable of producing a maximum out-of-plane displacement. The size of the LIPCA to be investigated was selected to be $10\;mm\;{\times}\;20\;mm$ in which the thickness of PZT plate is about 0.1 mm. The thickness of glass/epoxy and carbon/epoxy are about 0.09 mm and 0.1 mm, respectively. The evaluation process has been conducted thoroughly, i.e., analytical estimation, numerical approximation and the experimental measurement are all involved. Firstly, the design equation was used to calculate essential parameters of proposed lay-up configurations. Secondly, ANSYS, a commercial FEA package, was utilized to estimate displacement outputs of the actuators upon being excited. Finally, experimental measurements were able to verify the predicted results.