An Examination of the Thermopiezoelectric Effect in Multilayer Stack Actuators

This paper explores the influence of thermopiezoelectricity in piezoelectric actuators, specifically focusing on multilayer stack actuators. The research aims to investigate the impact of the pyroelectric and electrocaloric effects on the positioning, electric potential, and temperature of these actuators. To accomplish this, a custom finite element code that considers the three fully coupled field equations of thermopiezoelectricity is implemented in MATLAB. In addition, the study is extended to explore the influence that the temperature-dependent piezoelectric strain coefficients have on the stack actuator’s behaviour.