Electrokinetic Microactuator Arrays for Control of Vehicles

摘要

Merging sense, actuation and control capability at the microscale is a challenging problem. This particular effort pursued the development of microactuator arrays that function on the electrokinetic principle to permit active control of streamwise sublayer vortical structures in turbulent boundary layers. Electrokinetic microactuator arrays induce volume displacements in the sublayer by electrokinetic pumping under an impulsively applied electric field. The resulting micro electrokinetic actuator (MEKA) arrays have characteristics that make them potentially suited for practical sublayer control on full-scale aeronautical and hydronautical vehicles. Essentially loss-less frequency response has been demonstrated up to 10 kHz; theoretical bandwidth is in the MHz range. The final MEKA-5 is a full-scale hydronautical array with 25,600 individual electrokinetic microactuators on 350 micrometer spacing in a 7 X 7 centimeter mylar tile with a novel unit-cell architecture. The array has a MEMS- fabricated top layer with leadouts to unit-cell processing. In addition to the electrokinetic microactuators themselves, the MEKA-5 design is based on an array architecture that provides dramatic reductions in both sensor and processing requirements needed to achieve practical sublayer control on real vehicles.