Optimal Design and Experimental Characterization of a Compliant Mechanism Piezoelectric Actuator for Inertially Stabilized Rifle

Compliant mechanism amplifiers are often used in conjunction with piezoelectric actuators since they do not incur displacement losses that frequently occur in pin-jointed mechanisms. In this paper the design of a compliant mechanism amplifier and piezoelectric stack actuator is presented. The application is an inertially stabilized rifle (INSTAR) in which the compliant actuator is used to make small adjustments in the position of the barrel. A topology optimization method is used to obtain the initial topology of the compliant mechanism, followed by detailed finite element analysis. The effect of geometry parameters, material selection, and epoxy bonding layers in the piezoelectric actuator are studied. A prototype actuator is fabricated and characterized experimentally. The force and displacement performance of the prototype actuator are shown to exceed the design specifications for the INSTAR application.