Investigation on high-frequency performance of spiral-shaped trapezoidal piezoelectric cantilever

Abstract

Trapezoidal structure has been proposed for construction of piezoelectric cantilever to increase inherent frequency. To further break through the limitation on frequency value, trapezoidal piezoelectric cantilever is rolled into spiral-shaped piezoelectric cantilever with identical effective length in this study, which is verified in COMSOL simulations and experiments. A prototype shows that after rolling the straight shape into a spiral shape for the trapezoidal piezoelectric cantilever, the first inherent frequency promotes 4.5 times from 98100 Hz to 441,900 Hz, which is consistent with theoretic analysis. The spiral-shaped trapezoidal piezoelectric cantilever is suitable for working as an actuator in micro flapping-wing aircraft.