A rate dependent Prandtl-Ishlinskii(P-I) model is proposed to characterize the rate dependent hysteresis nonlinearity of piezoelectric actuators. Based on the classical P-I model of bilateral Play operator, the polynomial is introduced to modify its central symmetry. On this basis, the rise and fall rate of the driving voltage is introduced into the model parameters to describe its rate correlation. The rate dependent hysteresis characteristics of piezoelectric actuator are tested; the least square algorithm is used to identify the model parameters. The results show that the maximum error range is 0.076~0.190 μm, the root mean square error range is 0.044~0.077 μm, and the relative error is 1.2%~3.2% in the rate range of 0.12~6 V/ms, which verifies the accuracy of the model.