Single-Phase Drive Ultrasonic Linear Motor Using a Linked Twin Square Plate Vibrator

A novel linear motion ultrasonic motor, which uses a single resonance mode driven by a single phase and has the same motor characteristics for operation in reverse directions, is developed. An in-plane breathing mode in the square plate is strongly driven by the transverse effect of a piezoelectric ceramic. A stator resonator consists of twin square plates linked by V-shaped beams. Only one side of the square plate can be excited by the resonance of the breathing mode, when the other passive side plate is electrically opened so that the effective elasticities and the resonant frequencies between both plates are different; as a result, the friction edge of the resonator vibrates in a slant locus to move a load slider. The reverse operation is easily obtained by switching the driving side of the square plates. We designed the stator resonator by FEM analysis and fabricated a prototype for our experiment. The prototype motor showed good characteristics, for example, a moving slider velocity of 100 mm/s, a thrust force of 3.5 N, and an efficiency of 30% when the preload was 10 N, the input effective voltage was 5 V, and the input power was 1.2 W. (c) 2013 The Japan Society of Applied Physics