Optimal design of robust piezoelectric microgrippers undergoing large displacements

Topology optimization combined with optimal design of electrodes is used to design piezoelectric microgrippers. Fabrication at micro-scale presents an important challenge: due to non-symmetrical lamination of the structures, out-of-plane bending spoils the behaviour of the grippers. Suppression of this out-of plane deformation is the main novelty introduced in this work. In addition, a robust approach is used to control length scale in the whole domain and to reduce sensitivity of the design to small fabrication errors. Geometrically non-linear modelling is used for the in-plane deformations whereas out-of-plane motions are modelled by a linear, un-coupled plate model to save computational time. Model and resulting designs are validated by subsequent 3D geometrically non-linear modelling.