Analytical development of single crystal Macro Fiber Composite actuators for active twistrotor blades

Abstract

A Macro Fiber Composite (MFC) is a piezoelectric fiber composite which has aninterdigitated electrode, rectangular cross-section and unidirectional polycrystallinepiezoceramic (PZT) fibers embedded in the polymer matrix. A MFC actuator has muchhigher actuation performance and flexibility than a monolithic piezoceramic actuator.Moreover, the single crystal piezoelectric material exhibits much higher induced strainlevels, energy density and coupling than those of polycrystalline piezoceramic materials.Thus, the performance of an MFC can be improved by using single crystal piezoelectricfiber instead of polycrystalline piezoceramic fiber. This study investigates theanalytical modeling, material properties and actuation performance of an MFCusing single crystal piezoelectric material (single crystal MFC). For single crystalMFC, the mechanical properties are calculated by the classical lamination theory,and the uniform fields model (UFM) is adopted to predict piezoelectric strainconstants. In addition, the actuation performance of the single crystal MFC withthe active twist rotor blade is studied. The material properties and actuationperformance of single crystal MFC are compared with those of standard MFC.