Optimal Design of Cymbal Stack Transducer in a Piezoelectric Linear Actuator by Finite Element Method

Abstract The optimal design of a piezoelectric linear actuator using parametric optimum method-based finite element method (FEM) was presented. First, the FEM model of the cymbal stack transducer was generated with its initial configuration. The structural parameters were chosen as the design variables and the displacement on the top surface of the transducer taken as the objective function. Second, the zero-order optimization method was chosen as the basic tool of the structural updating. The structural optimization scheme of the cymbal stack transducer was carried out based on ANSYS parametric design language (APDL). Finally, an example of dynamic response analysis was performed on the cymbal stack transducer to verify the structural optimization scheme. The results show that the displacement on the top surface is increased by 32.9% compared with the case of initial configuration.