A new type of a direct-drive valve system driven by a piezostack actuator and sliding spool

A direct-drive valve (DDV) system is a kind of electrohydraulic servo valve system, in which the actuator directly drives the spool of the valve. In conventional DDV systems, the spool is generally driven by an electromagnetic actuator. Performance characteristics such as frequency bandwidth of DDV systems driven by the electromagnetic actuator are limited due to the actuator response property. In order to improve the performance characteristics of conventional DDV systems, in this work a new configuration for a direct-drive valve system actuated by a piezostack actuator with a flexible beam mechanism is proposed (in short, a piezo-driven DDV system). Its benefits are demonstrated through both simulation and experiment. After describing the geometric configuration and operational principle of the proposed valve system, a governing equation of the whole system is obtained by combining the dynamic equations of the fluid part and the structural parts: the piezostack, the flexible beam, and the spool. In the structural parts of the piezostack and flexible beam, a lumped parameter modeling method is used, while the conventional rule of the fluid momentum is used for the fluid part. In order to evaluate valve performances of the proposed system, an experimental apparatus consisting of a hydraulic circuit and the piezo-driven DDV system is established. The performance characteristics are evaluated in terms of maximum spool displacement, flow rate, frequency characteristics, and step response. In addition, in order to advocate the feasibility of the proposed dynamic model, a comparison between simulation and experiment is undertaken.