Optimal design of electrode polarization in piezoelectric unimorph beams to induce traveling waves

摘要

In this paper a milli-sized traveling wave actuator is designed by optimizing the polarization direction. Two different sets of electrodes are needed to generate the traveling wave. The topology optimization method is used to get the optimal sets of electrodes that minimize the difference between a pure traveling wave and the deflection generated. Classical issues in topology optimization problem such as mesh-dependence or intermediate densities are overcome by using filtering and projection techniques. Examples with different boundary conditions are presented in order to validate the model.