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High Torque Single-Crystal PMN-PT Driven Motor to Morph Naval Flow-Control Surfaces

A direct-drive smart material rotary motor was developed with significant performance improvements over existing designs. The improvements result directly from taking advantage of the special properties of single-crystal ferroelectrics. In Phase I of this effort, we demonstrated the benefit of using single crystal stacks as driving engines for a new generation of smart material motors - more compact, more reliable (fewer moving parts) and with higher torque and power density than existing designs. The performance advantage accrued with the piezocrystal stack is summarized in Figure 1. The high strain of a single-crystal stack (shown from 0.16% to 0.26% demonstrated in this project, but theoretically projected as high as 0.5%) results in much more energy per cycle transferred to an external load. This figure illustrates that, if the optimal external load is applied (with appropriate motion amplification), the single-crystal stack can deliver more than five times as much work per cycle compared to a piezoceramic actuator.

Figure 1 Performance advantage a single-crystal piezoelectric stack