Table of Contents

Abstract: It is a great opportunity to provide leadership and focus for the creation of a badly needed journal for intelligent actuators. Certainly, the field is just emerging from a nominal state of science, performance, cost, and universality. [...]

Abstract: We present the circuit and performance of a square wave driver and power supply for piezoceramic actuators characterized by large capacitance, up to 3 μF. Capacitance of piezoceramic element is the key factor that limits the use of powerful actuators operating at high frequencies (kHz). It is thus important to build a driver that allows use of a possible wide set of actuators in the widest range of frequencies appropriate for the piezoelement. The driver that we report uses the properties of non-inductive resistors that allow for operation at high frequencies. Our report details the design, construction, tests and limitations of the device and its application to the control of a microfluidic valve.

Abstract: Bent and folded beam configurations have been popularly used in electrothermoelastic (E-T) actuation. This paper introduces new designs of thermal end-effector with micro-grasping and micro-heating capabilities. We obtained analytical models for all possible steady state temperature responses of suspended and overhanging microstructures that constitute bent beam, folded beam, and combined actuators. Generally, the thermal response of E-T microstructures is sensitive to the boundary conditions, particularly for high power input. Thermal models have predicted the failure due to melting, which is the most common reason for failure of E-T devices, and it often occurs in the longest and the thinnest microstructure.