• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.31 no.1 s.256
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• pp.36-42
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• 2007

This paper presents mechanical design, fabrication and test of a biomimetic fish robot actuated by a unimorph piezoceramic actuator, LIPCA(Lightweight Piezo-Composite curved Actuator.) We have designed a linkage mechanism that can convert bending motion of the LIPCA into the caudal fin movement. This linkage system consists of a rack-pinion system and four-bar linkage. Four types of artificial caudal fins that resemble caudal fin shapes of ostraciiform subcarangiform, carangiform, and thunniform fish, respectively, are attached to the posterior part of the robotic fish. The swimming test under 300 $V_{pp}$ input with 0.6 Hz to 1.2 Hz frequency was conducted to investigate effect of tail beat frequency and shape of caudal fin on the swimming speed of the robotic fish. At the frequency of 0.9 Hz, the maximum swimming speeds of 1.632 cm/s, 1.776 cm/s, 1.612 cm/s and 1.51 cm/s were reached for fish robots with ostraciiform, subcarangiform carangiform and thunniform caudal fins, respectively. The Strouhal number, which means the ratio between unsteady force and inertia force, or a measure of thrust efficiency, was calculated in order to examine thrust performance of the present biomimetic fish robot. The calculated Strouhal numbers show that the present robotic fish does not fall into the performance range of a fast swimming robot.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.34 no.8
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• pp.55-62
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• 2006

This paper presents experimental evaluation of an insect-mimicking flapping-wing device actuated by a unimorph piezoceramic actuator. Length of each rod and hinge point in the linkage/amplification system are carefully chosen such that the resulting wing motion can mimic clapping of wings in a real insect at the end of upstroke. In addition to this, a pair of corrugated wings are fabricated mimicking zig-zag cross section of a real insect wing. Thanks to the two additional implementation, the improved flapping wing device can generate a larger lift force than the previous model even though area of the new wing is about 50% less than that of the previous wing. In this work, effects of the wing clapping, the wing corrugation, and the input wave form on the lift force generation have been also experimentally investigated. Finally, the vortex generated by the flapping device has been captured by a high speed camera, showing that vortices are produced during up- and down-strokes.

• 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.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1993.10b
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• pp.202-207
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• 1993

A theoretical and experimental study is presented for the force holding control of a miniature robotic ringer which is driven by a pair of piezoelectric unimorph cells. In the theoretical analysis, one finger is modeled as a flexible cantilever with a tactile force sensor at the tip and the mate of the finger is a solid beam supposed with sufficient stiffness. Further, the force sensor is modeled by a one-degree-of-freedom, mass-spring system and the output of sensor is then described by the sensor stiffness multiplied by the relative displacement. The problem investigated in this paper is that two typical holding tasks of the human finger are picked up and applied to the robotic finger. One is the work holding a stationary object with a prescribed, time-varying force and the other one is to keep the contacted force constant even if the object is in motion. The simple PID feedback control scheme is used to control the minute gripping force of order 0.01 Newton. It is shown both experimentally and theoretically that the artificial finger with the piezoelectric actuator works well in the minute force holding of the tiny object.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.759-780
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• 2015

Based on the theory of piezoelasticity, the static performance of a piezoelectric bilayer cantilever fully covered with electrodes on the upper and lower surfaces is studied. Three models are considered, i.e., the sensor model, the driving displacement model and the blocking force model. By establishing suitable boundary conditions and proposing an appropriate Airy stress function, the exact solutions for piezoelectric bilayer cantilevers are obtained, and the effect of ambient thermal excitation is taken into account. Since the layer thicknesses and material parameters are distinguished in different layers, this paper gives unified solutions for composite piezoelectric bilayer cantilevers including piezoelectric bimorph and piezoelectric heterogeneous bimorph, etc. For some special cases, the simplifications of the present results are compared with other solutions given by other researches based on one-dimensional constitutive equations, and some amendments have been found. The present investigation shows: (1) for a PZT-4 piezoelectric bimorph, the amendments of tip deflections induced by an end shear force, an end moment or an external voltage are about 19.59%, 23.72% and 7.21%, respectively; (2) for a PZT-4-Al piezoelectric heterogeneous bimorph with constant layer thicknesses, the amendments of tip deflections induced by an end shear force, an end moment or an external voltage are 9.85%, 11.78% and 4.07%, respectively, and the amendments of the electrode charges induced by an end shear force or an end moment are both 1.04%; (3) for a PZT-4-Al piezoelectric heterogeneous bimorph with different layer thicknesses, the maximum amendment of tip deflection approaches 23.72%, and the maximum amendment of electrode charge approaches 31.09%. The present solutions can be used to optimize bilayer devices, and the Airy stress function can be used to study other piezoelectric cantilevers including multi-layered piezoelectric cantilevers under corresponding loads.