Asymmetric-hysteresis compensation in piezoelectric actuators

The advantages of using piezoelectric actuators in ultra-precision applications are often impaired by nonlinear effects, in particular hysteresis, which may lead to positioning uncertainties of up to 15% of the actuator's stroke. Model-based compensation strategies are often prescribed in order to overcome this limitation and achieve better dynamical accuracy. This comes, however, at the expense of increasing identification and implementation complexity, especially when hysteresis is of the asymmetric type, such as prevalent in hard piezoceramic materials. This paper proposes a new compensation strategy based upon (i) treating hysteresis as being separate from other dynamical effects and (ii) formulating a new, simplified model to deal with asymmetric hysteresis, based on applying a linear operator to the conventional hysteresis models. After developing the theoretical background of the compensation strategy, the accuracy improvement due to the new hysteresis-compensation method is demonstrated experimentally. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.