Effect of Lamination Pressure on the Strain Response of PZT Based Multilayer Actuators

Lamination under pressure at an elevated temperature is one of the steps of fabricating multilayer ceramics including multilayer actuators. It is generally assumed that during the lamination process the pressure applied, albeit within a range, has a trivial role in the ultimate behaviour of fired multilayer actuators. However, in the present work, we show that lamination pressure plays an important role in the most critical property, viz, strain response of multilayer actuators. Depending on the lamination pressure, the strain values may change more than hundred percent, though other properties like hysteresis, capacitance, tan and coupling coefficient remain nearly unaffected.