Tracking control of a piezoelectric actuator based on experiment hysteretic modeling

Micro positioning systems using piezoelectric stack actuator (PEA) have a very wide range of applications including ultra-precision machine tools, diamond turning machines and motion stage with flexure hinge structure mechanism design. These positioning responses comprise with hysteretic behavior when voltage is actuated. The tracking control accuracy of PEA is therefore limited due to their inherent hysteresis nonlinearity. The dynamics of the PEA modeling in positioning available in literatures were revisited, compared and discussed with incorporating simulated and experimental implementation in this paper. This paper presents a new computer-based tracking control approach for PEA by facilitating a feedforward open loop control based on hysteretic modeling from experiments. Simulations and experiments on tracking control of several sinusoidal waveform of input frequency shows that the root mean square tracking error can be reduced to be less than 2% of the maximum traveling path.