Design of star-shaped flextensional stator for ultrasonic motor

When a driving voltage opposite to the piezoelectric polarity is applied on the flextensional stator, it will generate the normal force, of which the operating voltage range of piezoelectric actuators will decrease. This paper presents a novel stator design for producing the normal force in which the driving voltage has the same piezoelectric polarity, which is based on the structure of two multilayer piezoelectric actuators clamped in a star-shaped shell. To obtain the two close resonance frequencies of flexural and translation modes, a genetic algorithm combined with the finite element analysis is employed to find the optimal dimensions for the geometry of the stator. The importance of each design parameter is evaluated through a proposed sensitivity analysis method. A prototype resulting from the optimal design was fabricated and the experimental results are given to show that the stator can generate, in practice, the required coupling resonance mode between 35.15 kHz and 36.49 kHz.