Development and Analysis of a High Thrust Force Direct-Drive Linear Actuator

This paper presents the design and analysis of a novel high thrust force linear actuator with high backdrivability. This motor consists of a mover and a stator with spiral (helical) structure. The mover moves spirally in the stator, and the linear motion is extracted to drive the load. This motor is a direct-drive system and highly backdrivable. In this paper, a basic model and thrust-force/torque equations are proposed, and finite-element method analysis and experimental results of a prototype are presented. From experiments, the designed spiral motor achieves 2000-N rated thrust force. The thrust-force capabilities of the spiral motor are compared with other linear motors. It is confirmed that the spiral motor is almost close to the latest state of the art in linear motor technology.