A practical control strategy for servo-pneumatic actuator systems

A practical control strategy with a simple controller structure is proposed for servo-pneumatic cylinder actuator systems. Theoretical analysis reveals that the acceleration of the piston indirectly represents the cylinder chamber pressure difference so it is possible to employ acceleration feedback instead of pressure feedback in the construction of servo-pneumatic actuator control systems. The main features of the control strategy developed in the paper are (1) using acceleration feedback to improve the stability of the system; and (2) introducing time-delay minimisation and optimised null offset compensation to address the problem of time delay and dead zone, which are mainly caused by the compressibility of air and friction. The experimental studies have been conducted using an asymmetric pneumatic cylinder system and the results show that the system performance has been much improved when compared with a conventional PID controller. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.