Self heating of piezoelectric actuators: measurement and compensation

This paper introduces the effect of self heating on the displacement of piezoelectric actuators and a novel method to quantify self heating. Issues influencing self heating were discussed which include; the frequency and the amplitude of the driving voltage, and the size, or more specifically the volume-area ratio of the actuator. The effect of a load on the heat generation is also studied. According to the experiments, the peak-to-peak value of the consumed current is a good indication of the temperature rise of the actuator. This can be used for the protection of the actuator from overheating, or as the authors will propose in the paper, it can be used to compensate for the changes in the displacement induced by the self heating. The displacement error of the heated actuator reduces in average down to one part in three when the proposed compensation is used.