Simulation And Optimization For Piezoelectric Actuator Of Inkjet Printhead

Piezoelectricity inkjet printing technology has been attracted great attention by many industries due to its advantages in fast print speed, long lifetime and high printing accuracy. The core of piezoelectricity inkjet printing technology-the fabrication of the inkjet printhead has been monopolized by a minority of foreign companies for a long time. With the increasing demand of inkjet printheads in domestic market, many scholars begin to research and develop the inkjet printhead. Piezoelectric actuator, as the core part of the inkjet printhead, is mainly used to provide driving force for the inkjet printhead. The structure design and optimization of the piezoelectric actuator determines the inkjet property and mechanical property of piezoelectric actuator.In this paper, piezoelectric actuator was modeled by using COMSOL.The structure parameters of the piezoelectric actuator and driving signal of the piezoelectric actuator were optimized. To evaluate the quality of the piezoelectric actuator, the maximum displacement of driver was used as the evaluation index for the piezoelectric actuator. During optimization of the driver parameters, orthogonal experiment was employed to significantly reduce the times of numerical simulation. A SNR (Signal Noise Ratio) analysis and mean value analysis were conducted with MINITAB16 to obtain the optimal parameters for the driver.To verify the numerical simulation results and test the designed structure of the piezoelectric actuator, the actual amplitude of the special piezoelectric actuator was measured by laser doppler vibration equipment. Finally, the most suitable structure and driving signal can be determined by analyzing both numerical simulation results and laser doppler vibration results. Detected by a high speed droplet detecting system, the inkjet printhead with the optimized structure parameters can jet ink droplet continuously under trapezoidal-wave driving signal.