Design, modelling and control of a micro-positioning actuator based on magnetic shape memory alloys

This paper presents an actuator based on magnetic shape memory alloys (MSMAs) suitable for precise positioning in a wide range (up to 1 mm). The actuator is based on the spring returned operating mode and uses a Smalley wave spring to maintain the same operating parameters of a classical coil spring, while being characterized by a smaller dimension. The MSMA element inside the actuator provides a deformation when excited by an external magnetic field, but its behavior is characterized by an asymmetric and saturated hysteresis. Thus, two models are exploited in this work to represent such a non-linear behavior, i.e., the modified and generalized Prandtl-Ishlinskii models. These models are particularly suitable for control purposes due to the existence of their analytical inversion that can be easily exploited in real time control systems. To this aim, this paper investigates three closed-loop control strategies, namely a classical PID regulator, a PID regulator with direct hysteresis compensation, and a combined PID and feedforward compensation strategy. The effectiveness of both modelling and control strategies applied to the designed MSMA-based actuator is illustrated by means of experimental results.