Develop an Improved Miniature Amplifier for Piezoceramic Actuation through Feedback Control

Piezoceramic materials have been successfully used in many fields, such as aerospace, civil and mechanical engineering, and in most cases they are used as sensors. As an actuator, piezoceramic materials exhibit non-linearities that force the use of advanced algorithms in control applications, and thus limiting the potential to move from the laboratory to large scale field applications. Moreover, piezoceramic actuators require bulky bench power amplifiers for even small applications. In this paper, a miniature piezoceramic amplifier was built to provide similar features that commercial amplifiers provide in a much smaller format and at a lower cost. The miniature amplifier is capable of running using a single battery. Additionally, a PID controller was designed and implemented to allow the reduction of hysteresis through charge feedback. Tests were conducted on a piezoceramic stack actuator with no load and verified using a laser displacement sensor.