Aiming at the micro-assembly and micromanipulation of micro structures, a monolithic compliant-flexure based microgripper is introduced. This paper presents the design, modeling and simulation of a 2 DOF monolithic microgripper. In the proposed microgripper 2 piezoelectric stack actuators are used to obtain the tip displacement and the gripping force. The relationship between the gripping force, tip displacement in horizontal and vertical direction, input force and input displacement of the piezoelectric driven microgripper are established using Pseudo-rigid-body-model. Finite element analysis (FEA) was conducted to evaluate the responses of the model under the specified load and displacement to investigate optimum design of the model. Well established FEA simulation tool like ANSYS is used and results are compared. The simulation results indicate that: (1) The theoretical model matches well with the FEA results for the proposed microgripper; (2) A displacement amplification ratio of 10.486 and a maximum stroke of 419.5 µm is achieved in the horizontal direction; (3) A displacement amplification ratio of 4.1995 and a maximum stroke of 164.08 µm is achieved in vertical direction. The simulation and theoretical results have proven the good performance of the microgripper. Keywords: Microgripper, piezoelectric actuator, compliant mechanism, micromanipulation, pseudo-rigid-body-modelCite this Article Royson D’souza, Suraj Kumar, Navin Karanth P. Design, Modeling and Simulation of a 2-DOF Microgripper using Piezoelectric Actuator. Recent Trends in Electronics and Communication. 2015; 2(1): 10–18p.
