A low-speed entire-cycle smooth motion rotary piezoelectric actuator: design, manufacture and experimental evaluation

High precision and long stroke are important characteristics of piezoelectric actuators, but it is difficult for existing actuators to possess both of these features simultaneously. Therefore, this work proposes a rotary piezoelectric actuator featuring multi-foot alternating actuation to achieve entire-cycle smooth motion with low-speed. The neighborhood cultivation genetic algorithm (NCGA) is adopted to optimize the flexible driving foot, aiming for high stiffness and large displacement. Combined with the high-rigidity and high-precision shafting structure, it achieves wide-range smooth motion and high-position pose holding force. The influence of voltage amplitude, exciting frequency and overlap rate on smooth motion was studied. The optimal excitation parameters of the actuation signal for the low-speed smooth motion were determined. The entire-cycle smooth motion was achieved by using the excitation parameters of the actuation signal in a multi-foot alternating manner. This work has a positive promoting effect on broadening the application of piezoelectric actuators in deep space optical communication and laser processing fields.