A digitally-controlled, low-cost driver for piezoceramic flight control surfaces in small unmanned aircraft and munitions

A digitally-controlled, low-cost driver for piezoceramic flight control surfaces in miniature aircraft and munitions has been developed. The piezoceramic material, being capacitive, requires /spl plusmn/DC voltages for bi-directional deflection. Accordingly, the driver is a variable output capacitor charger with bipolar output voltage. Output voltage slew rate is also variable, providing rate-of-closure adjustment. Overvoltage protection is elegantly provided without additional components while a microcontroller handles serial data transfers from a remote targeting system and gating of MOSFETs within the driver. Measured performance and mathematical predictions are in agreement and loss mechanism are identified and modeled.