Power harvesting, energy harvesting, power scavenging, and energy scavenging are four terms commonly used to describe the process of extracting useful electrical energy from other ambient energy sources using special materials called transducers that have the ability to convert one form of energy into another. While the words power and energy have vastly different definitions, the terms “power ...

piezoelectric actuators are widely used in micro manipulation applications. however hysteresis nonlinearity limits accuracy of these actuators. this paper presents a novel approach utilizing a piezoelectric nano-stage as slave manipulator of a teleoperation system. the prandtl-ishlinskii (pi) model is used to model actuator hysteresis in feedforward scheme to cancel out this nonlinearity. a pas...

Thepresent paper discusses active vibration control of a cantilever beam subjected to random base excitation. The smart materials used are piezoelectric patches for both as sensor and actuator, and actuation based on the surface strains. Finite element model of the smart beam is obtained using Euler-Bernoulli formulation. Positive Position Feedback (PPF) controller is proposed for active dampin...

Dual-stage actuator design for hard disk drives via composite nonlinear feedback control is presented, which consists of a primary actuator, the voice coil motor and a secondary actuator, the suspension piezoelectric microactuator. The first is effective in both track seeking and following stages to produce fast rising time and low overshoot and the latter works in track following stage only to...

The feasibility of harnessing electric energy using piezoelectric inserts in a sport sneaker has been demonstrated. Continuing in that spirit, this thesis compares regulation schemes for conditioning the electric energy harnessed by a piezoceramic source imbedded in a shoe insole. Two off-line, dc-dc direct converter hybrids (buck and forward) are proposed and implemented to improve the convers...

We consider piezoelectric flow energy harvesting in an internal flow environment with the ultimate goal powering systems such as sensors in deep oil well applications. Fluid motion is coupled to structural vibration via a cantilever beam placed in a converging-diverging flow channel. Two designs were considered for the electromechanical coupling: first; the cantilever itself is a piezoelectric ...

As tape recording density increases, high-frequency track following capability of the tape head actuator becomes more important. This paper details the mechanical design and experimental analysis of a dual state actuator tape head. The dual stage actuator design combines a traditional voice coil motor for low frequency track following with a piezoelectric actuator for high-frequency track follo...

The design and fabrication of a piezoelectric micro actuator on a silicon diaphragm is presented for application of micro ink jet. We developed the micro devices for the fluid transference that are fabricated using thick film technologies for ceramic materials and Si micro-machining. The performance of drop ejection was shown from the optimal design parameters. It is closely related to the prec...

A growing demand for actuators with a volume of less than 1 mm3 has driven researchers to produce a varied range of micro/milli-scale designs. By examining the underlying physics of the actuator operation we are able to demonstrate why piezoelectric ultrasonic actuators have the greatest potential to meet this need. Moreover, it allows us to create a new classification system for piezoelectric ...

We present a general inexpensive method for realizing a Teflon stack microreactor with an integrated piezoelectric actuator for conducting chemical synthesis with solid products. The microreactors are demonstrated with palladium-catalyzed C-N cross-coupling reactions, which are prone to clogging microchannels by forming insoluble salts as by-products. Investigations of the ultrasonic waveform a...