LLCC-PWM Inverter for Driving High-Power

Piezoelectric Actuators
Rongyuan Li, Norbert Fröhleke, Joachim Böcker
Institute of Power Electronics and Electrical Drives, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany
Li@lea.upb.de, Froehleke@lea.upb.de, Boecker@lea.upb.de

Abstract— In this contribution a novel LLCC-PWM
inverter is presented for driving ultrasonic high power
piezoelectric actuators. The proposed system of a pulse-
width modulated inverter and LLCC-type filter is designed
in a way to reduce the total harmonic distortion of the
motor voltage and to locally compensate for the reactive
power of piezoelectric actuators. In order to limit the
switching frequency, a pulse width modulation using
elimination technique of selected harmonics is designed and
implemented on a FPGA. Due to local compensation of
reactive power and high dynamic behavior of LLCC PWM
inverter, the whole power supply shows an optimal
performance at minimized volume and weight compared to
LC and LLCC resonant converters.
Keywords— Piezo actuators, sonotrode, piezoelectric
converter, high-frequency power converter.
I. INTRODUCTION
The challenge of an appropriate power supply for a
ultrasonic piezoelectric actuator arises from the following
reason: A piezoelectric actuator is known to exhibit a
distinct capacitive behavior. On a closer inspection, the
electrical behavior is even more complicated. It even
depends on the frequency-dependent interactions between
actuator and load. Previous works on ultrasonic motors
have shown that the quality factor as measure of the
system damping has a strong influence on the converter
topology to be chosen [1] [3] [4] [5].
Over the last decade electronic power supplies for
piezoelectric systems are well studied and applied using
different kinds of resonant converter concepts. A resonant
inverter with LLCC-type output filter presented in [3] and
[4] shows advanced characteristics and best suited
properties in respect to efficiency, stationary and dynamic
behavior, as well as to control and commissioning efforts.
The drawbacks of these resonant inverters are the large
volume, heavy and costly magnetic components of the
resonant filter such as transformer and inductor [6],
especially in case of driving piezoelectric actuators in the
range of some kW.
Therefore, power converters which do not require
heavy inductors are of great interest. In order to reduce the
size and the weight of magnetic components, a carrier
based PWM controlled inverter with LC filter was
investigated [5]. It was shown that LC-PWM inverters are
more suitable for weakly damped piezoelectric vibration
systems such as bond sonotrodes, where none or small
reactive power is delivered at the operating point by the
inverter. Thanks to the high switching frequencies, the
inductivity Ls can be decreased significantly compared to
those used in resonant filters. This results in smaller and
lighter components. However, the high switching
frequency of PWM inverters results consequently in high
switching losses and might be in conflict with EMC
issues.
To overcome these drawbacks, the proposed LLCC-
PWM inverter shown in Fig. 1 is investigated to excite the
high power piezoelectric actuator, in which a LLCC filter
circuit is utilized and operated in PWM controlled mode.
In order to eliminate selected harmonics, suitable
switching angles of the PWM can be calculated. The
novel solution offers significant advantages to improve the
performance of the power supply as follows:
1. The reactive power of the piezoelectric actuator is
compensated locally, by placing the inductor Lp
close to the actuator. Hence, cables of considerable
length between output transformer and actuators
can be rated only with respect to the real power.
2. Due to the PWM method and reactive power
compensation, the output filter shows optimized
performance at minimized volume and weight,
compared to the classical resonant inverters
presented in [3] [4].
3. The total harmonic distortion (THD) of the
piezoelectric actuator voltage is reduced without
increasing the switching frequency compared with
a LC-PWM inverter. The importance of a low
THD result from the fact that life time of the piezo
stack suffers from too high THD of the exciting
voltage.
Fig. 1 Proposed LLCC-PWM controlled inverter
A power supply prototype capable of converting a
270 V DC input voltage to an AC output voltage with
maximum amplitude of 270 V is implemented including
frequency and magnitude control. Experimental results are
presented for a standard multilayer piezoelectric actuator
driven in a frequency range of 30 kHz to 40 kHz.

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c 2008 IEEE
 II. HIGH POWER PIEZOELECTRIC ACTUATOR
High power piezoelectric actuators are used to build
various kinds of piezoelectric system like ultrasonic
motors or sonotrodes for ultrasonic machining. Due to
their high power density, they are applied more and more
in aircrafts and industry [1] [7].
These actuators are normally constructed using the
solid-state piezoelectric ceramic actuator which converts
electrical energy directly into mechanical energy through
linear motion, and are able to withstand high pressures of
up to 100 kN.
Moreover, in case of preloaded mechanical system, the
actuators can be supplied with AC voltage sources solely
omitting DC-biasing and could be operated in their
mechanical resonance frequency. This ensures a more
efficient operation.
Different from conventional electromagnetic actuators,
piezoelectric actuator do not utilize magnetic fields and so
they do not behave inductively. However, their distinct
capacitive behavior has to be considered when designing
the power supply and its control scheme.
For the analysis of piezoelectric motors the load is
represented by the well known equivalent circuit, depicted
in Fig. 2(a), where the capacitance of the piezoelectric
material is represented by Cp, the dielectric losses within
the ceramics are represented by Rp and can be neglected
due to their minor contribution. The mechanical vibration
system is described by a series resonant circuit Lm-Cm-Rm,
which represent inertial mass, stiffness and mechanical
damping shown in Fig. 2(b). ZL is representing the
mechanical load, which can be approximately modeled by
an equivalent electrical impedance consisting of
inductance LL, capacitance CL, and resistance RL of the
load [4] [7]. By combining these elements with the Lm, Cm,
Rm of the actuator, the whole mechanical resonant circuit
results as shown in Fig. 2(c) with following parameters:
C C
LM = Lm + LL , CM = m L , RM = Rm + RL
Cm + CL

(a) Simple mechanical modeling of piezoelectric actuator

iiP
Fig. 3 Frequency characteristic of actuator system input admittance.
iP Lm Rm (Admittance ratio M , equals 0.001, 0.05, 0.01, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10.)
iCp Cm
CP The input admittance Y ( jΩ) frequency characteristic
uCp uL
Rp is shown in Fig. 3, where the normalized frequency
Ω = ω ωres1 is used. Effects of load changes are depicted
in Fig. 3, with the admittance ratio M = RM C Pωres1 .
Rm = ds/A, ds: damping Two resonance frequencies at
2
Cm = A /c, c: stiffness Ω res1 = ωres1 / ωres1 = 1 and
Lm = m/A ,
2
m: mass Ω res 2 = ωres 2 / ωres1
A: force factor can be observed. The series resonance frequency
(b) Equivalent circuit
ω res1 = 1 LM CM is the resonance frequency of the
iiP mechanical equivalent circuit and is determined only by
iP the mechanical parameters. In contrast to ωres1 , the
iCp LM −1 / 2
§ CM CP ·
uCp
CP CM parallel resonance frequency ω res 2 = ¨¨ LM ¸¸
© C M + CP ¹
is caused by the capacitance of the piezoelectric ceramics.
RM
Note, that ωres 2 > ωres1 . Operation at that parallel
resonance frequency requires high input voltage at low
(c) Equivalent circuit including load input current.
Fig. 2 Equivalent circuit of a piezoelectric actuator

160 2008 13th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (EPE-PEMC 2008)
 III. POWER SUPPLY DESIGN
The electrical characteristic of equivalent mechanic
resonant circuit decides about some design consideration
of the power inverter.
1. The fundamental frequency of the power inverter is
usually chosen in the proximity of the resonant
frequency of the mechanical vibration. In order to
reduce the high supply voltage, the operation range
of piezoelectric actuator is chosen near to the series
resonance frequency ω res1 = 1 LM C M . Then, the
switching frequency of the inverter is also
determined.
2. The real power and reactive power required by the
piezoelectric actuator have to be delivered by the
inverter; the power ratio and the efficiency are
determined by the operational point of the
piezoelectric actuator.
3. The actuator capacitance, originating from the high
number of piezo stacks, varies with temperature,
resulting from differing operating conditions. This
obviously complicates the power supply design.
Under power supply aspects the proposed inverter
should thus provide a robust and highly dynamic
operating behavior to guarantee a stable operation within a
certain frequency and capacitance range. The above
mentioned requirements are taken care of by designing
control and filter.
Fig. 4 LLCC type filter Topologies
Fig. 5 Frequency characteristic uCp/ufilter
A. Filter topology
The inverter output filter plays an important role as
coupling between power supply and actuator. A LLCC
filter topology is shown in Fig. 4, with a transformer being
integrated into the resonant circuit to provide galvanic
isolation. Of course, the inverter resembles the LLCC
2008 13th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (EPE-PEMC 2008)
resonant inverter, but due to the different modulation
scheme, these inverters behave differently, which can be
seen from frequency characteristic shown in Fig. 5.
By closer inspection, the advantages of LLCC filters
such as robustness to parameter fluctuations of e.g. the
piezoelectric capacitance, as well as simple controllability
compared with LC filters become obvious. The second
electrical resonant point of the filter can be set at a higher
frequency compared with resonantly modulated inverters,
considering the smaller low order harmonics of the PWM
output voltage. Hence, the LLCC filter results smaller and
lighter compared with the LC type, and a better dynamic
response is obtained.
Fig. 6 Inverter output voltage with harmonic eliminated pulse width
modulation
π
2
3π
8
π
4
π
8
0
Fig. 7 Switching angles for eliminating 3rd, 5th, 7th and
9th harmonic vs. modulation index
B. PWM with elimination of specific harmonics
Harmonic elimination techniques are described in [8]
[9]. The switching angles are pre-calculated, so that low
order voltage harmonics applied to the load are eliminated
or reduced. Since the remaining harmonics are located at
higher frequencies, a LLCC filter with a small series
inductor Ls is sufficient.
In order to eliminate the harmonics of orders 3, 5, 7,
and 9, five switching angles are used in a quarter period as
depicted in Fig. 6. In Fig. 7, the resulting angles versus
modulation index are shown.
A FPGA device (Xilinx Vertex4-xc4vsx35) is used as
pulse width modulator. The algorithms to calculate the
switching angles are implemented by using Xilinx’s
System-Generator tool on Matlab-Simulink platform
The simulations with pre-calculated switching angles
are performed, and the resulting spectrum of the inverter
output voltage is shown in Fig. 8 with reference value of
1. As expected, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th harmonic components do
not occur.
161
 PWM ª x el,s º ª A LLCC_Og ȦB º ª x el,s º ªB LLCC_Og 0 º ªu in,s º
«x » = « − Ȧ +
A LLCC_Og »¼ «¬x el,c »¼ «¬ 0
⋅
B LLCC_Og »¼ «¬u in,c »¼
¬ el,c ¼ ¬ B

1 ªu pi ,s º ªC LLCC_Og 0 º ªx el,s º
«u » = « 0 C LLCC_Og »¼ «¬x el,c »¼
¬ pi,c ¼ ¬
0.8

where
U /udc

[ ]T
PWM
ufilter

0.6
xel , s = iLs , s uCs , s iLp , s u pi , s
0.4
xel , c = [iLs , c uCs , c iLp ,c u pi , c ]T
ª Rs 1 1 º
«− L − 0 −
0.2
ª1 1 º
Ls Ls »
« s » «L Ls »
« 1 0 0 0 » « s »
«0 0 »
0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 « C » 1 »
Frequenz/kHz A LLCC_Og = « s 1 », B LLCC_Og = « 0 −
« 0 0 0 » « Lp »
Lp » «
Fig. 8 Spectrum of PWM output voltage
« 1 »
« 1 1 1 » «0 »
« 0 − − » «¬ C p R p »¼
¬« C p Cp C p R p ¼»
IV. CONTROL SCHEME
A
Averaging model
A. Averaging model of MM-USM for power supply waveform
control design
In order to reduce the simulation time and facilitate the
control design, a model with idealized switching behavior
of the power circuitry is assumed. The generalized
averaging method [10] [11] is employed to approximate
the original state variables by Fourier series Original waveform
representations of an adequate order. Fig. 9 illustrates the
averaging model and the control diagram.
In view of the principle of piezoelectric energy
conversion, the averaging model is divided into an
electrical and a mechanical subsystem. Each subsystem
can be analyzed using methods for linear systems. (a) Current of piezoelectric actuator (iPi,)
Piezoel.
Piezoel.
reaction
Electrical effect Mechanical
effect V
subsystem subsystem Averaging model
uref
waveform
fref GHel1 GHm1
phref ufilter uin upi a x
GKel1 GKm1
PWM
GKel1 GKm1
- -
GHel1 GHm1

Original waveform

Fig. 9 Averaging model for power supply control design

The state variables of the electrical subsystem

[
are xel = i Ls , uCs , i Lp , u Pi , input ]
variables are
[u filter , umech ] , and output variable is the voltage of Fig. 10 Simulation waveforms of averaging model

piezoelectric actuator u pi . The electrical subsystem is These state space equations represent an averaging
model of the tangential mode power supply and the
described by a state space equation.
piezoelectric actuator. Since the Fourier coefficients vary
By a 1st-order Fourier series representation, every much slower in time than the original quantities, this
quantity x el (t ) can be expressed as model is more suitable for means of control design.
x el (t ) = xel,s (t ) sin(ȦB t ) + x el,c (t ) ⋅ cos(ȦB t ) Simulation results of a step response of voltage u filter
with slowly time-varying Fourier coefficients x el,s (t ) , from 0 to 180V are presented in Fig. 10. From performed
simulation we notice some oscillatory effect in the
x el,c (t ) . The state space equations of the electrical averaging model and original system. The reason
subsystem and piezoelectric mechanical subsystem originates from the resonance of the mechanical
represented by Fourier coefficients result as follows: subsystem, indicating the trend, the more damping exists
in the mechanical subsystem, and the smaller the
oscillation amplitude is excited.

162 2008 13th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (EPE-PEMC 2008)
B. Feed-forward voltage control function in order to design outer mechanical oscillation
amplitude control.
In Fig. 12 step response simulation results of the
voltage control are presented, with the amplitude
2 2
calculated by uCp = uCp ,s + uCp ,c . Comparing
simulation results in Fig. 12 with Fig. 10 we notice that
the oscillatory effects are well damped by feed-forward
voltage control.

(a) Feed-forward voltage control

(b) Simplified electrical subsystem with feed-forward control

Fig. 11 Voltage control diagram Fig. 13 Inverter prototype

The proposed voltage control scheme is presented in
Fig. 11. The electrical subsystem is replaced by a system V. IMPLEMENTATION
consisting of main transfer function Gel,main(z) and coupled An experimental inverter prototype to deliver a power
transfer function Gel,couple(z), while a second order of 1.5 kW to the load was built to verify the operation
Butterworth filter principle, see Fig. 13. The rated output voltage is 270 V
1 + 2 z −1 + z −2 (amplitude) at a frequency of 33 kHz. The design of
G f , el ( z ) = components and parameters are listed in Table 1 and
1 + b1 z −1 + b2 z − 2 Table 2.
is used as pre-filter. Table 1 Component design of LLCC filter
Mechanical resonant fm 33 kHz
frequency
Piezoelectric capacitor Cp 137 nF
Parallel inductor Lp 151 ȝH
Series inductor Ls 45 ȝH
Series capacitor Cs 440 nF

Table 2 Operating parameters of harmonic eliminated PWM inverter

with LLCC filter
(a) Sine and cosine component Real power P 1480 W
Apparent power S 1648 VA
Power factor 0.9
RMS current of Ls 7.5 A
RMS 4.8 A
current of switch S1
average 2.6 A

Considering that the first non-negligible harmonic

(b) Voltage of piezoelectric actuator
Fig. 12 Simulation results of voltage control
Due to the robust characteristics (see Fig. 5) of the
LLCC filter circuit in the proximity of ω B , the electrical
subsystem can be simplified by the pre-filter
characteristic. This provides a simple inner loop transfer
components occur at a frequency of more than 300 kHz,
then a light and small inductor Ls is sufficient, which is a
strong argument for the selection of the circuitry when
applied in aircrafts. For driving the piezoelectric elements
in the tangential mode of the PIBRAC motor, the
components of PWM controlled LLCC filter are given in
Table 1.

2008 13th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (EPE-PEMC 2008) 163
 Selected calculated variables of the harmonic
eliminated PWM inverter with LLCC filter are listed in
Table 2; the current and voltage of filter input and output
are shown in Fig. 14. The power factor is larger than that
of the LLCC resonant inverter, but the generated inverter
losses are increased corresponding to using higher
switching frequencies.
Due to the fact that the target motor is still under
construction an equivalent load was used instead
constituted by respective ohmic resistors and capacitors.
Selected experimental waveforms are shown in Fig. 14,
indicating good congruency with results gained by
simulation.
Spikes appearing at the filter voltage ufilter will largely
be reduced by exchanging utilized CoolMOS transistor
against HF-MOSFET housing enhanced diodes in respect
to reverse recovery.
u filter
uCp
i filter
Voltage of piezo actuator uCp, Input voltage of filter ufilter,
Input current of filter (ifilter, 2A/div)
Fig. 14 Experimental waveforms
Fig. 15 Frequency spectrum of piezo actuator voltage uCp and filter input
voltage ufilter,
The measured spectrum of the piezo actuator voltage
uCp and filter input voltage ufilter is shown in Fig. 15. Note,
that the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th harmonic components are larger
than the simulation results in Fig. 8. This is caused by the
delay time of MOSFET drivers, which reduce the
switching angles slightly compared to calculation.
Even though the higher harmonic components are
dominated in the harmonic distortion of ufilter, we notice
that the higher harmonic components of uCp are well
164 2008 13th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (EPE-PEMC 2008)
suppressed with increasing frequency due to the band-pass
characteristic of the LLCC filter circuit.
VI. CONCLUSION
The LLCC PWM inverter is more complex, but yields
less THD, smaller and lighter filter components and larger
bandwidth compared with a resonant operated inverter. A
thoroughly designed LLCC filter exhibits the required
robustness in respect to parameter variations, and enables
the reduction in size of filter components and the
utilization of cable parasitics. The cable weight is also
minimized by the reduction of RMS-current rating arising
from local reactive power compensation. A FPGA is
employed as controller by reason of its flexibility, fast and
parallel processing characteristics. The operation of the
power supply system is verified by simulation and
measurement.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Thanks belong to the European Community for funding
the PIBRAC project under AST4-CT-2005-516111 as
well as our project partners.
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