Piezoelectric polymer model validation applied to mm size micro-robot I-SWARM (intelligent swarm)

Abstract

In this paper an electro-mechanical model to describe the behavior of a PVDF multi-layer smart structure is presented and proposed for I-Swarm mm³ microrobot actuators. The study is based on the modal analysis of the partial differential equations governing the motion of an Euler-Bernouilly cantilever beam. A pair of linearly coupled piezoelectric equations between the mechanical and the electrical domains is presented. An important element in the modelization of such materials is the energy losses term. A viscous damping contribution is considered which allows us to extract more realistic constituent equations for the material to work as sensor or actuator. The development of this equation as an infinite linear combination of each mode allows us to extract a compact lumped equivalent electrical circuit to work at any frequency region instead of the classical reduced models.