A Lifetime Model for Piezoceramic Actuators in Adaptronic Systems

This work presents a lifetime model for piezoelectric actuators by combination of previous available information/expertise and tailored tests in order to save test time and costs. It is shown that the assumptions drawn from expertise comply with the experimental results. Therefore, it was possible to set up a lifetime model which uses linear interpolation between given data points to assess the lifetime at any combination of relative humidity and temperature within the range covered by the model. The lifetime model is applied to a selected piezoceramic multilayer actuator (Ceramtec SP 505 7x7x32.4). The results of this application are presented and discussed. In general, the application of this method allows a cheaper lifetime assessments of piezoceramic actuators in early development stages of adaptronic systems.