Arnaud Sellier 1), Xavier Brun 1), Sylvie Sesmat 1), Jean-Marie Retif 2), Xuefang Lin-Shi 2), Daniel Thomasset 1), Mohamed Smaoui 1)
1) Laboratoire d'Automatique Industrielle, INSA Lyon, Bâtiment Saint Exupéry, 25 Avenue Jean Capelle, 69621 Villeurbanne Cedex, France,
2)Centre Génie Electrique de Lyon, INSA Lyon, Bâtiment Léonard de Vinci, 21 Avenue Jean Capelle, 69621 Villeurbanne Cedex, France
This paper presents a new control method applied to the electro-pneumatic field. This strategy originates from the hybrid control theory recently developed for the control of asynchronous or synchronous electrical motors, e.g. Retif (2004). The interest of this strategy concerns the possibility of using standard on/off distributors instead of the usual servodistributors (components issued from proportional technology) for the force control of a pneumatic cylinder. Distributor components have less performance but are cheaper than a servodistributor. The aim is to obtain, with a distributor, the same performances as servodistributors on the global system. Based on both cylinder and distributor models, the hybrid control presented here chooses the best state for each on/off distributor to reach the desired force value. Experimental results are presented and discussed.
Keywords: hybrid control, on/off distributor, valve, electro-pneumatic, experimental results, force control