Novel piezoelectric rotary motor on the basis of synchronized switching control

Abstract

A novel piezoelectric rotary motor (PRM) on the basis of synchronized switching control was designed, fabricated, and tested to achieve high speed, high efficiency, and high torque. The new motor mainly consists of a vibrator working in the resonance state as the driving element of the PRM and a clutch working in the quasi-static state to control the shaft for unidirectional rotation. The finite element method software COMSOL Multiphysics 5.4 was used to design the structure of the motor and determine the feasibility of the design mechanism of the PRM. Moreover, an experimental setup was built to validate the working principles and evaluate the performance of the PRM. The prototype motor outputted a no-load speed of 7.21 rpm and a maximum torque of 54.4 N mm at a vibrator driving voltage of 120 Vp–p and a clutch driving voltage of 200 Vp–p. The motor achieved a net efficiency of 15.6% under the preload torque of 3 N mm. The average stepping angle of the motor with no-load was 0.068, when the voltages applied to the clutch and the vibrator were 200 Vp–p and 120 Vp–p, respectively, with the frequency of 512 Hz.