Active filter driver for piezo-actuators for flapping-wing micro air vehicles

Abstract

Piezoelectrically actuated flapping-wing micro air vehicle (MAV) is an emerging technology. This paper discusses limitations of presently used voltage drivers for the piezoelectric actuators used in such applications and suggests an active filter-based unipolar high-voltage driver. A Chebyshev polynomial has been used to extract a unipolar sinusoidal high voltage signal from a unipolar square wave signal for driving the piezoelectric actuators at low frequency in flapping-wing MAV applications. The filter is based on Sallen–Key topology and is suitable for connecting a piezo-bimorph in series or parallel electrical connection. We have considered an application-specific piezoelectric bimorph actuator of 40 Hz flapping frequency and 32 nF capacitance in each piezoelectric layer to design a driver. The driver circuit in verified by simulation results of OrCAD® software. The driver circuit can control the frequency of the sinusoidal driving voltage, which causes wing-flapping, by radio control communication.