Design of a Highly Dynamic Hydraulic Actuator?for Active Damping Systems in Machine Tools

The positioning accuracy of conventional servo hydraulic cylinders is limited by oil compressibility, leak oil, nonlinearities, hysteresis effects, etc. This affects the control quality of the actuator, which is essential for a use in high dynamic positioning tasks, such as applications in active damping systems for machine tools. The presented hydraulic actuator design is a new approach to extend those limitations by using membrane based piston guidance and casing of pressure chambers. The actuator design is based on a linear mathematical model and FE-Simulations. The developed linear actuator model is integrated into a coupled multi body simulation of an existing active damping system. As the results of the coupled multi body simulation were promising, the actuator was manufactured and put into operation. A first insight into the behavior of the actuator and the verification of the linear actuator model is provided.