Control of a dual stage magnetostrictive actuator and linear motor feed drive system

A dual stage feed drive system is well suited to satisfying current demands of high performance machining with tight position control under high feed rates in the presence of disturbances. It does this by integrating an actuator with high position resolution and fast response together with a conventional linear drive. A magnetostrictive actuator (MA) with a bandwidth in the kHz range capable of several kN of force output is an ideal candidate for use as the fine positioning element in such a dual stage system. However, MAs display significant hysteresis in their performance. This makes the effective implementation of real-time fast servo control challenging. In this paper, a dynamic Preisach model is utilized to reduce the undesired nonlinearity. A sliding mode controller (SMC) is designed to deal with uncertainties such as the Preisach modeling error as well as external disturbances so as to ensure a robust stable system. Experimental results show the servo performance improvement during a feed step test for single axis control and a single axis component of a sharp path interpolation test.