Abstract
Shape memory alloys (SMA), in particular nickel–titanium alloy (or nitinol), have been usedas actuators in some astronautic, aeronautic and industrial applications. The future will seemore SMA application if less energy is required for actuation. This paper presents thedesign and experimental results of control of an SMA actuator using pulse widthmodulation (PWM) to reduce the energy consumption by the SMA actuator.A SMA wire test stand is used in this research. Open-loop testing of the SMAwire actuator is conducted to study the effect of the PWM parameters. Based ontest results and parameter analysis of the pulse width (PW) modulator, a PWmodulator is designed to modulate a proportional plus derivative (PD) controller.Experiments demonstrate that control of the SMA actuator using PWM effectively savesactuation energy while maintaining the same control accuracy as compared tocontinuous PD control. PWM also demonstrates robustness to external disturbances.A comparison with a pulse width pulse frequency modulator is also presented.
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