Current rapid development in MEMS area has opened up many possibilities in nano-technology such as nano-fabrication. Among them is nanoscale wiring by both AFM (Atomic Force Microscope) tip and laser beam. Being able to make a relatively small deflection, a micro thermal actuator can be used to control the near field optics of the beam minutely and accurately. In this project, we will investiga...

The observational and measurement system in the micro environments to manipulate objects in the micro world is becoming necessary in many fields, such as manufacturing; “Micro Factory (Fig.1)”;one of the past Japanese national project, and medical usages; the micro surgery. Most of the past researches in the micro environments might be only focused on the micro manipulation but not on the micro...

Rocket fairings, load-carrying structures of solid rocket motor case, e.g., inter-stage joint, satellite-rocket joint, etc., usually take the shape of conical shell sections. This paper is to evaluate spatially distributed microscopic control characteristics of distributed actuator patches bonded on conical shell surfaces. The converse effect of piezoelectric materials has been recognized as on...

Spherical shell-type structures and components appear in many engineering systems, such as radar domes, pressure vessels, storage tanks, etc. This study is to evaluate the micro-control actions and distributed control effectiveness of segmented actuator patches laminated on hemispheric shells. Mathematical models and governing equations of the hemispheric shells laminated with distributed actua...

We present an ultra-thin meso scale piezoelectric actuator consisting of a piezoceramic beam and a carbon fiber displacement-amplification frame. We show that the actuator can be designed to achieve a wide range of force/displacement characteristics on the mN/μm scales. The best performing design achieved a free displacement of 106 μm and a blocked force of 73 mN, yielding a total energy densit...

Using a coarse-and-fine actuator combination (dual stage system), a new design of the three degree-of-freedom (DOF) micro parallel positioning platform with high mobility, high accuracy, and a large working space is proposed. To achieve these three DOFs and implement the dual stage system, there are six possible architectures for the coarse and fine actuators, respectively. This paper is organi...

A simulator is developed to model and design high strain shape memory alloy (SMA) tension actuators. The simulator may be used predict characteristics of a given actuator, or to design its geometry under speci cations such as force, speed, stroke and size. The accuracy of the model is veri ed experimentally in reference to an existing NiTi shape memory alloy prototype actuator. Having developed...

Technological problems for realization of Micro Electro-mechanical System (MEMS) are discussed and an introduction of smart materials (PZT) is encouraged. The film formation and micromachining technology are discussed in integration of PZT thin films into MEMS. Further developments are proposed on PZT micro sensors and actuators with special emphasis laid on exploration of new application field...

Modeling a MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) electrostatic actuator in electrical domain is important for system simulation of the actuator along with its associated electronics. For instance, an integrated MEMS resonator used in a serial I/O PLL design modeled in electrical domain enables to optimize the system with the rest of the electronics. In this work, we have developed a simplifie...

In this work, we design and simulate a valve less, diaphragm-based, piezoelectric micro pump. The piezoelectric actuator is a PZT-5H piezo-disk, the diaphragm is a borosilicate glass plate. All the simulations were made using COMSOL Multiphysics software. First, the piezoelectric actuator and membrane thicknesses were chosen by means of a stationary simulation, using the piezoelectric devices m...