Analysis of the Piezoelectric Ceramics PLZT With ANSYS

Traditional electric servo system is disturbed by electromagnetic interference, so optical servo system is needed to build urgently in order to avoid electric signal and electrical wire. Therefore, photostrictive ceramics becomes promising material to realize the optic-signal transmission and photostriction. Lanthanum-modified lead zirconate titanate (PLZT) ceramics, which also belongs to piezoelectric ceramics, is one of the most promising photostrictive materials that can stretch with the light intensity. Photostriction is the combination of the photovoltaic and converse piezoelectric effect. Because of little knowledge about photostriction, the piezoelectric characteristic of PLZT, which is a portion of the photostriction, is studied by use of coupled-field analysis of the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software ANSYS. The detailed steps of modeling are given. The performances of unilateralism and multilayer PLZT are described, such as displacement output, stiffness and dynamics characteristics. It can be concluded that ANSYS calculation value is very close to the theoretical results by comparing those two results, so ANSYS software can be used to preestimate before we research the characteristics of piezoelectric devices.