An Eight-Zonal Piezoelectric Tube-Type Threaded Ultrasonic Motor Based on Second-Order Bending Mode

In order to reduce the driving voltage and gain better output characteristics of piezoelectric actuators, an eight-zonal piezoelectric tube-type threaded ultrasonic motor based on two second-order bending modes was analyzed using the method of finite element analysis (FEA), and a prototype was fabricated and experimentally studied in this research. This piezoelectric motor was designed to be excited by four electrical sources applied simultaneously to four groups of electrodes on the customized lead zirconate titanate (PZT) tubular stator (inside diameter 5.35 mm, outside diameter 6.35 mm, length 30 mm), with +/- 90 degrees phase shifts between adjacent electrodes. Experimental results show that the threaded motor could output a stall force (stall force means the output pull or thrust force when the linear speed is set to be zero) of about 5.0 N and a linear velocity of 4.9 mm/s with no load at the driving voltage of 40 V-pp (V-pp means the peak-to-peak value of the voltage volts). This piezoelectric motor with a compact structure and screw drive mechanism shows relatively fine velocity controllability and has huge superiority in micro-positioning systems.