The objective of this work was to develop a thermally-driven bimetallic actuator for application in high temperature environments. The actuator was designed to drive distributed air flow control valves in a gas turbine combustor. The valves control localized cooling air flows in response to rises in temperature, leading to more uniform and complete combustion. The actuator is a passive thermo-mechanical device formed from bimorph elements concatenated in a recurve architecture to obtain the required forces and deflections. An electroplating process for depositing an Invar-like alloy in deep recess was developed and used in the fabrication of prototypes. Fabrication of additional protypes and testing are continuing.

Date Published: 16 January 2003
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 4981, MEMS Components and Applications for Industry, Automobiles, Aerospace, and Communication II, (16 January 2003); doi: 10.1117/12.472869

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4981:
MEMS Components and Applications for Industry, Automobiles, Aerospace, and Communication II
Siegfried W. Janson, Editor(s)