A DYNAMIC MODEL OF ELECTROSTRICTIVE UNIMORPH ACTUATORS FOR HAPTIC DEVICES

Piezoelectric materials are commonly found in many devices, but their usage is limited by the low strain and high stiffness of the material. This prevents their use in "soft" applications, such as compliant actuators for haptic feedback devices and wearable technology. The actuation dynamics of a ferro-electric relaxor terpolymer, a type of soft and high strain electroactive polymer (EAP), are examined. This paper studies the unimorph actuator via a linearized time-domain model and experiments to validate the model include step response and frequency response of tip displacement.