High Performance Piezoelectric Airframes for Nano Air Vehicles
Abstract
Currently, Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) are too large to penetrate buildings for situational awareness and reconnaissance, emplace important sensors, and sample and return material. While a variety of Micro Air Vehicles have been built and flown that use propellers and flapping wings for lift generation, Nano Air Vehicles (NAVs), defined as weighing less than 10 grams with wingspans less than 7.5 cm, have yet to be flown. NAV-scale actuators and wings with the requisite range of motion, power, and efficiency do not exist. In this project, we used a newly developed micromachining process based on Inductively Coupled plasma Reactive Ion Etching (ICP-RIE), for PZT chips to fabricate novel, high performance actuators for NAVs. A novel T-beam actuator was fabricated using ICP-RIE etching from the front of a bulk PZT chip. Masked electrode deposition created active and passive regions in the PET structure. with a T-shaped cross section, and bottom and top flange and web electrodes, a cantilevered beam can bend in-plane and out-of-plane with bimorph actuation in both directions. One of these T-beam actuators was fabricated and experimentally tested. An experimentally validated model predicted that the cross-section geometry can be optimized to produce higher displacement and blocking force.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 30, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA485149
Entities
People
- A. Hirsh
- C. Rahn
- H. Kommepalli
- S. Tadigadapa
Organizations
- Pennsylvania State University