Application of Piezo-Composite Actuator

to Control Surface of Small Missile Robot

*


Bum-Soo Yoon, Ki-Hoon Park and Kwang-Joon Yoon
Department of Aerospace Information System
Artificial Muscle Research Center, Smart Robot Center in Institute of Intelligent Vehicle & System Tech.
Konkuk University
Seoul, 143-701, Korea
chilpooni@hotmail.com, mdspark96@hanmail.net, kjyoon@konkuk.ac.kr


*
This work is partially supported by the grant of Korea Agency for Defense Development under contract ADD-06-02-01 and Brain Korea Program of Ministry of
Education.
Abstract In this study, a new type of control surface for a
small supersonic missile robot has been designed and
manufactured using piezo-composite actuator. This study is to
replace the conventional heavy hydraulic or electro-magnetic
motor actuator by lightweight and simple piezo-composite
smart actuator. The piezo-composite actuator is composed of a
piezoelectric ceramic layer, a carbon/epoxy layer and glass/
epoxy layers. One side of piezo-composite actuator was fixed
on missile fin end part. A simple demonstration model was
manufactured and evaluated through experimental test. From
the performance test result, it was found that the bimorph type
actuator could produce more stable angle of attack irrelevant
to its load.

Index Terms Smart Actuator, Control Surface, Missile Fin

I. INTRODUCTION
One of the assignments that must be solved for
embodiment of smart structure is development of high efficie-
ncy intelligent material actuator. Conventional hydraulic
/pneumatic actuators which have developed for the operation
control of aircraft and other machines are heavy and also
complicated in structure so the necessity of light weight
actuator is required these days. What is really needed for
development of control surface with intelligent element would
be the deciding method through the efficiency test and
simulation of various form such as piezoelectric ceramic, ionic
polymer-metal composite (IPMC), shape memory polymer.
Structural mechanism to be applied on control surface
should be designed to have adoptability so that any intelligent
materials can be applied and the purpose of this research is to
develop an actuation system of control surface by using
structure mechanism.
The purpose of the present research is to develop light-
weight and simple smart actuators in order to replace
conventional hydraulic or electro-magnetic motor actuator
system, and to apply the developed piezo-composite actuators
to the control surface of a small missile robot [5].



II. PROCEDURE DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE
A. Analytical Design Model for Unimorph Actuator
Newly developed structure with intelligent material
depends more on numerical analysis or experiment than
analytic method. But to design an efficient system, it is needed
to achieve a performance analysis through analytic method for
actuator. We proposed an analytical model for the design of
layered unimorph actuator [4].



Fig. 1 Schematic for the curvature change of a laminated
beam with electro active layer.

Fig.1 shows the curvature change of the laminated beam
that can be formulated as (1) using the simple beam
deformation theory when a pure bending moment is applied,

1
a a
M a P
D D

= = =

(1)

Where D is the total bending stiffness which is the sum of
the bending stiffness of each layer,

i
i
I E D

= (2)

Where E
i
and I
i
are the modulus and the area moment of
inertia of each layers. The change of actuation moment M
a
is
the vector product of the actuation force change P
a
of the
actuation layer and the moment arm a. The change of
actuation force P
a
can be obtained from the multiplication of
a
978-1-4244-1758-2/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE. 1591
Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE
International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics
December 15 -18, 2007, Sanya, China
the area of actuation cross section t
a
, the elastic modulus E
a
,
and the strain d
31
/t
a
V induced from the change of electric
field where d
31
is the electro-active strain coefficient,

V d E a V
t
d
E t P
a
a
a a a
= =
31
31

(3)

The equation (1) can be expressed as follows,

V d E
D
a
a
=
31
(4)

In this paper, we define a coefficient of unimorph
actuator c
ua
as a ratio of a moment arm to a bending stiffness
as,

D
a
c
ua
= (5)

Then,

V d E c
a ua
=
31
(6)

In case of using same composite ceramic wafer, the
moment arm length form the flexural neutral surface of the
actuator beam to the center of the actuating layer must be as
large as possible to have a larger actuating moment, which
means that the actuating layer should be placed on one of the
outer surfaces. In addition, the total bending stiffness of an
actuator section should be small to have a large curvature
change for a given actuation moment

B. Lift, Drag, Moment Calculation for Control Surface
Under the supersonic air flow condition like Fig. 2 and 3,
lift, drag, moment produced on control surface can be
calculated using (7) and (8).


Fig.2 Plane on aerodynamics in supersonic air flow


L
SC V L
2
2
1

= and
D
SC V D
2
2
1

= (7)

1
4
2

M
C
L

and
1
4
2

M
D
D

(8)

With flight condition

2 =

M at sea level, = 10

And when chord length of control surface is 3inches and
span length is 3inches, the calculated lift force L is 149lb and
the drag D is 26lb.









Fig.3 Moment of fixed wing section

Using (9) moment can be calculated.

bD aL Moment + = (9)
lb in M Moment = 227 :

C. Manufacturing of Actuator
Fig.4 and 5 show the lay-up structure of unimorph
actuator and bimorph actuator.


Fig.4 Structure of unimorph actuator



Fig.5 Structure of bimorph actuator


Table I is material properties using for piezo-composite
actuator.



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TABLE I
BASIC PROPERTIES OF ACTUATOR
Properties
Piezo-
Ceramic
Carbon/Epoxy Glass/Epoxy
E1(GPa)
E2(GPa)
E3(GPa)
G12(GPa)
12(GPa)
59.9
59.9
23
0.3
231.2
7.2
4.3
0.29
21.7
21.7
3.99
0.13
1(x10
-6
/K)
2(x10
-6
/K)
2
2
-1.58
32.2
14.2
14.2
d31(10
-10
m/V) -190 - -
(g/cm
3
) 7.8 1.51 1.91


D. Experiments and Results
To evaluate the actuation performance of the manufact-
ured composite actuator, an actuator testing system was
constructed as Fig.6. The system consisted of actuator jig,
high voltage signal function generator (TD-2 Power Supplier,
Face International Co.), digital camera for capture image and
image scan program (AutoCAD).












Fig. 6 Experimental setup for actuator test

One end of an actuator was fixed using the 92mm span jig
like cantilever fixing condition. Angle change of actuator was
measured to observe the change of angle of attack of the
control surface.


Fig.7 Measurement of angle of attack ()

The actuator was excited by the power supply system with
in the range of voltage that domain switching phenomenon
does not happen. For unimorph actuator, the voltage range was
from -400V to +150V, and bimorph actuator, the voltage
range was from -550V to +500V. Especially for the bimorph
actuator, we excited the input voltage applied to the upper and
bottom ceramic independently in order to prevent switching
phenomenon.
The actuation performance of each actuator is compared
in Table II for the condition without load and with 50g load.

TABLE II
COMPARISON OF ANGLE CHANGE FOR ACTUATOR TYPE
Type Weight(g) Voltage(V) Angle Change()
Unimorph
0
50
-400
+150
5.72
5.64
Bimorph
0
50
-550
+550
5.38
5.44





Fig.8 Angle of attack vs. applied voltage curves on
intelligent element

From experimental results, it was observed that the
bimorph type actuator showed more linear angle change for
AutoCAD Program
Support Jig & Camera
High Voltage Power Supply
Capture
Angle of attack
Test jig


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the excitation voltage change than the unimorph type. It is
recommendable to have a large actuation angle change in
order to fulfil control surface actuation requirements, but it is
also important factor in control system development and
actuation mechanism to have a tendency of linear actuation
displacement. Therefore, bimorph actuator type is recomme-
ndable as a missile control surface.

E. Modeling of Control Surface
Fig.9 shows the tip-joint model and shell-joint model
described using 3D design program. Generally, the tip-joint
type is suitable to the structure, which need big displacement
and small force, and the shell-joint type is suitable to the
structure, which need big force and small displacement on the
contrary. All two application methods have merits and
demerits, but enough performance verification and necessity
terms desired should be filled before application to control
surface using smart actuator [7].
By doing kinematics simulation and simple analysis using
such 3D program we could reduce trial and error time
consuming process happened in manufacturing. Simulation
about embodiment of control surface embedded system that
can control missile structure furthermore should be
accompanied.

Fig.9 Application structure model using smart actuator


Fig.10 Modelling of shell-joint flexspar configurations


Fig.11 Modelling of lever system flexspar configurations


III. Conclusion
This paper describes the procedures of design, manufac-
turing of smart structure application of the piezo-composite
actuator with the performance evaluation and comparison
method. From the test results of the application devices, we
found that the possibility of piezo-composite actuator could be
used as a control surface of guided missile robot. We have
designed and manufactured the piezo-composite actuator in
two types, unimorph actuator and bimorph actuator. The
actuating performance of both actuator types were tested and
evaluated. It was found that the bimorph type actuator showed
more linear angle change for the excitation voltage variation
than unimorph type.
It is expected that piezo-composite actuator has a
possibility to be used not only as a guided missile robot but
also as a control surface actuator of a small unmanned flying
robot through the miniaturization of power supply and control
system.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We appreciate the support of Defense Acquisition
Program Administration and Agency for Defense
Development for this study to be completed under the contract
UD060029AD. This work also has been supported by a grant
of Brain Korea of the Ministry of Education.
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