Electro-mechanical coupling characteristics of PZT for sensor and actuatorapplication

Piezoelectric ceramics are good candidate materials for sensor and actuator applications, because of its ability to convert mechanical energy to elect rical energy and vice versa. The response speed of Electro-mechanical conve rting signal in piezoelectric transducers is up to a few hundreds kilohertz . Therefore, they are widely used in vibration and acoustic system. In thes e applications, the nonlinearity of the materials is a main factor to consi der when one designs the control system. In this paper, the nonlinearity of electro- mechanical coupling of PbZrxTi(1-x)O3 was investigated. Experimen tal results showed that the piezoelectric properties of PZT are greatly aff ected by the sequence and the amplitude of the applied voltage.