Position Control of a Double Acting Hydraulic Cylinder Using Piezo-Hydraulic Drive System

This paper presents position control of a double acting hydraulic cylinder driven using piezo-hydraulic drive system. The piezo-hydraulic drive system is designed and developed using piezo-hydraulic pump with active valves (PHPAV) as the hydraulic power source. PHPAV is a novel active valve piezo-hydraulic pump developed using flexurally amplified piezoelectric actuators. The PHPAV generates a maximum theoretical pressure of 5.19Bar and is connected to the double acting hydraulic cylinder through different hydraulic components. The PHPAV is powered to charge the hydraulic accumulator initially for a pressure of 2.5Bar. The hydraulic charge of 2.5Bar stored in the accumulator is then used to drive the hydraulic cylinder. Experiment for closed loop position control of the double acting hydraulic cylinder is performed using dSPACE controller interfaced with the MATLAB software. During the experiment, the drive system could achieve a positional accuracy of 100 µm. Further, the drive system is modelled in the FluidSIM software and simulations are performed. The developed model could closely simulate the cylinder position with experimental results.