Abstract
Electrohydraulic servovalves are widely used for precise motion control in aerospace and other industries due to their high accuracy and speed of response. However, commercial two-stage servovalves have several undesirable characteristics, such as the power consumption caused by the quiescent flow (internal leakage) in the pilot stage, and the complexity and high number of parts of the torque motor assembly, which affect the cost and the speed of manufacture. The solution to these problems can help to reduce costs, weight and power consumption, and enhance the reliability and reproducibility as well as the performance of these valves. For these reasons, this paper proposes a novel configuration for the pilot stage: it is composed of two normally closed two-way two-position (2/2) valves actuated by two piezo-electric ring benders; the opening and closing of the two piezo-valves can generate a differential pressure to be used to control the displacement of the main spool. In this way, there is negligible quiescent flow when the main stage is at rest; in addition, the torque motor and all its components are removed. To assess the performance of this novel pilot stage concept, a prototype of the piezo-valve has been constructed and tested. The experimental results indicate that the response speed of the new piezo-valve is very high. Furthermore, a numerical model is employed to show that, by adjusting specific parameters, the performance of the piezo-valve can be further improved, so that the valve can be fully opened or closed in less than 5 ms.
Highlights
The architectures of commercially available two-stage servovalves have not substantially changed for many years, since they can provide high reliability and excellent dynamics [1]
This valve, along with the deflector jet servovalve. This valve, along with the deflector jet servovalve, is the most-used two-stage servovalve design by virtue of the strong points explained in the principle), is the most-used two-stage servovalve design by virtue of the strong points explained in introduction the introduction [2]
Faster amplified voltage trends are predicted for higher values of the natural frequency; instead, in terms of displacement and pressure rise, there is only a slight improvement for higher values of the natural frequency. This numerical analysis has shown that the valve performance can be enhanced by reducing the volume of oil in the system, by reducing the mass of the moving parts and by increasing the natural frequency of the amplifier
Summary
The architectures of commercially available two-stage servovalves have not substantially changed for many years, since they can provide high reliability and excellent dynamics [1]. The force levels developed are much higher than proportional valves or on/off valves using solenoids to directly drive the spool [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10], which results in a much faster response and higher shear forces. These characteristics have led to widespread use of these servovalve designs, which are fundamental components in closed-loop electro-hydraulic motion
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