Investigation of the effect of geometrical parameters on the out-of-plane displacement of a T-shaped piezoelectric microcantilever

Achieving to the higher out-of-plane displacement for a piezoelectric microcantilever enhances sensitivity and accuracy of the related microsensors and causes increase in displacement and performance of the related microactuators. In this paper, out-of-plane displacement of a piezoelectric microcantilever with T-Shaped cross section has been modeled using finite element method. With the aim of increase in out-of-plane displacement of this microcantilever, effect of the geometrical parameters on the out-of-plane displacement of the microcantilever has been investigated using the Taguchi method. Optimum levels of the piezoelectric microcantilever geometrical parameters to achieve the maximum out-of-plane displacement were obtained using analysis of the signal to noise ratios and order of the effect importance of geometrical parameters on the out-of-plane displacement was specified using analysis of variance (ANOVA). Among the studied parameters, length of the microcantilever (L) has the most influence on the out-of-plane displacement. The higher the length of the microcantilever,the more the out-of-plane displacement. Then, beam web depth (h) has the most effect on the out-of-plane displacement of the microcantilever. The less the web depth, the more the out-of-plane displacement of the microcantilever. Using optimum levels of the geometrical parameters, out-of-plane displacement of 296.3 µm was obtained that is about 2.3 times of the result of the latest research conducted in this field.