| Current Research Projects | ||
| Piezoelectric Pump with Innovative Non-Mechanical Active Valves | ||
| Dong-gun Lee | ||
| The development of a piezoelectric hydraulic pump with innovative active valves is presented in this study. The pump structure basically consists of a diaphragm type piezoelectric stack actuator and two specially designed unimorph disc valves acting as inlet and delivery valves. Static and dynamic piezoelectric finite element analyses were used to maximize the delivered fluid volume per stroke and to predict the resonance characteristics of the pump, respectively. Dynamic experiments were also conducted and results are in good agreement with those obtained from the simulation. |  |
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| Piezohydraulic Motor | ||
| Marie Tieck | ||
| The goal of this research is to design and build an ultrasonic, anti-resonant pump. We desire to operate the pump at anti-resonance because in piezoelectric structures, the anti-resonant frequency coincides with a marked decrease in power consumption, while the displacements are still much higher than quasi-static operation. Ultimately, the transducer will have an outer diameter of approximately 15 mm, and a power density (power/mass) of approximately 1 kW/kg, the highest currently published value. |  |
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