Investigation of Energy Efficiency in Force Control of Pneumatic Actuators

Pneumatic actuators, due to their unique features, have numerous industrial applications. However, when compared to electrical actuators, one of the major problems of the overall pneumatic system is low-efficiency. Thus it is important to develop control algorithms for force tracking of pneumatic actuators while minimizing the consumed energy. This paper presents three different approaches for force tracking of pneumatic cylinders. A dual-action pneumatic cylinder along with a real-time control platform were used to compare the energy efficiency and force tracking performance of these methods. Experiments with sinusoidal forces reveled that minimizing the chamber pressure gives the best tracking performance and energy efficiency in higher frequencies.