Comparison of Controllers and Actuators Effect on Electro Hydrostatic Actuator

Abstract

Hydraulic actuators play a major role in aircraft flight actuation and control. Primary control systems in an aircraft typically control the components that guide an airplane during flight. Electro Hydrostatic Actuators (EHA) is emerging as a viable option for aerospace as well as industrial machine builders. It is an emerging technology which replaces centralized hydraulic system by a self-contained and localized direct drive actuator system. As most of the aircraft applications use symmetric actuator, Symmetric actuator EHA system configuration is considered in most of the literatures. However in case of many industrial applications, asymmetric actuators are being used. The dynamic response that means how fast an actuator reaches a target position is an important criteria for any application. An indigenous experimental setup of EHA system is developed with measuring instruments and sensors that forms a mechatronic system. The Variable Motor and Fixed Pump configuration of EHA is used for experimentation. In this work the load analysis is carried out on asymmetric and symmetric actuators. Similarly the load analysis is carried out on different controllers like Proportional Derivative (PD), Proportional Integral (PI) and Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) over the dynamic response as a output. It is found that symmetric actuator and PD controller gives better results.