The objective of this paper is to describe the creation, modeling and testing of an active diaphragm flexure. The flexure is a circular stainless steel plate with three sets of spatial concentric slits. Such a flexure is commonly used as a passive centering spring but may be made active with the addition of piezoceramics. By adding piezoceramics as bi-morph pairs, out of plane motion is induced in the flexure. This active flexure is modeled using finite elements to determine the flexure's stiffness and natural frequency. A simplified analytical model is also developed. From this simple model, design equations for stiffness and frequency can be determined. By changing flexure properties, such as thickness, ring width or plate materials; approximate values of stiffness and natural frequency can be determined. For this paper only variations in the thickness of the flexure are examined. A comparison between experimentally obtained results and both the finite element and analytical models is presented. Results show that both numerical and analytical models can be used as predictive tools to determine flexure properties.

Date Published: 9 July 1999
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 3674, Smart Structures and Materials 1999: Industrial and Commercial Applications of Smart Structures Technologies, (9 July 1999); doi: 10.1117/12.351556

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3674:
Smart Structures and Materials 1999: Industrial and Commercial Applications of Smart Structures Technologies
Jack H. Jacobs, Editor(s)