Optimal design of curved actuator through high performance computing

In this paper, the electromechanical displacements of curved actuators such as THUNDER are calculated by finite element method to design the optimal configuration of curved actuators. To predict the pre-stress in the device due to the mismatch in coefficients of thermal expansion, the adhesive as well as metal and PZT ceramic is also numerically modeled by using hexahedral solid elements. Because the modeling of these thin layers causes the numbers of degree of freedom to increase, large-scale structural analyses are performed in a cluster system in this study. The curved shape and pre-stress in the actuator are obtained by the cured curvature analysis. The displacement under the piezoelectric force by an applied voltage is also calculated to compare the performance of curved actuator. The thickness of metal and adhesive, the number of metal layer are chosen as design factors.