Design and Analysis of a Stick-Slip Piezoelectric Actuator with Mitigated Backward Motion

Piezoelectric actuators have become core driving components in ultra-precision positioning and micro-nano manipulation due to their fast response, high stability and compact structure. However, traditional stick-slip piezoelectric actuators commonly suffer from backward motion, which cannot satisfy the engineering requirements of high precision and stable actuation. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes a stickslip piezoelectric actuator with mitigated backward motion based on the principle of driving-intermittent clamping coordination. The actuator consists of a driving module and an intermittent clamping module. The driving module employs a single piezoelectric stack and the two stage lever amplification mechanism (TLAM), which is composed of a bridge-type mechanism and a lever mechanism in series to amplify the micro-displacement and convert it into linear stepping motion. The intermittent clamping module is directly actuated by a single piezoelectric ceramic and adopts a time sequenced locking strategy to fundamentally suppress backward motion. Simulation results show that the X-direction amplification ratio of TLAM is 10.91 with good linearity, and the maximum stress is far below the material yield strength, ensuring high reliability. The proposed actuator has a simple structure and can effectively suppress backward motion. It provides a high-performance driving scheme for ultra-precision positioning systems and has good application prospects.