Dr. Bosotti, of the University of Milano, Italy, has devised a test setup to investigate the behavior of piezoelectric ceramics for the application in an active frequency tuner for ILC superconducting cavities (SC). The test conditions provide data equivalent to 10 years of continous operation in ILC cavities.

P-888.90 PICMA^® low voltage piezoelectric multilayer actuators were cooled down to liquid nitrogen temperatures and continuously run for 1500.000.000 cycles of switching close to maximum stroke.

Conclusions: "...the piezo under test doesn't have any significant variation both of electrical (capacity and resonance frequency), mechanical (max stroke) and electromechanical properties (hysteresis figure). Therefore, from this point of view, we can expect that the actuator has enough lifetime for ILC operation, provided to avoid any stresses in directions different from the longitudinal one. "

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