Engineering Science and Military Technologies ISSN: 2357- 0954

Volume (4) - Issue (1) - Mar 2020 DOI: 10.21608/ejmtc.2020.31861.1145

Position control of a pneumatic cylinder actuator using modified

PWM algorithm
Original
Article Moataz A. Youssry1, Wael M. Elmayyah2, Mohamed Hussien Mabrouk3
1
Egyptian armed forces and 2,3Military Technical College

Abstract
Pneumatic cylinders are used as actuators for modern automated
systems in many industries applications for their numerous advantages.
Basically, those applications are implemented using components such
as proportional and servo pneumatic control valves that are relatively
expensive because of their high accuracy even in applications that
Keywords: do not require such high accuracy. Recently, binary (on/off) solenoid
Dead-zone compensator, non-linearity, pneumatic directional control valves (DCVs) have been used to replace many of
double acting cylinder, solenoid DCV. the expensive components and consequently reduce the system cost
with achieving acceptable accuracy. This paper presents a control
technique for a positioning system of a pneumatic double acting cylinder
controlled by pair of on/off solenoid DCVs. The control technique has
been developed based on a parametric study presented previously by the
authors[1]. The control technique depends on operating the DCVs using
a pulse width modulation (PWM) algorithm that is modified to employ
a valve dead-zone compensator (DZC) along with using optimum
pneumatic parameters gained from the performed parametric study. An
experimental test bed for a pneumatic double acting cylinder positioning
Corresponding Author:
system that uses a pair of on/off solenoid DCVs has been installed to test
Mohamed Hussien Mabrouk, Military the accuracy of the presented control technique. A comparison between
Technical College, Cairo, Egypt, the performance of the positioning control technique using the modified
Tel: +201011345207. Email: mmabrouk@ PWM control algorithm and the traditional one has been carried out
mtc.edu.eg. to experimentally show the enhancement of the positioning accuracy
with acceptable maximum steady state error less than 0.7 mm when
using the modified PWM control technique due to reducing the system
nonlinearity associated with its dynamics.

I. INTRODUCTION the nonlinearities of the system as the output has basically

only two states[2]. In order to decrease some of the systems'
Over the last decades, the utilization of pneumatic nonlinearities, which appear in form of hysteresis, most
systems in industrial applications has risen for their many researchers used pulse width modulation signals to operate
advantages. Pneumatic systems are effective, environment- solenoid DCVs[3].
friendly, durable, reliable, and highly adaptable to harsh The dynamic behaviour of solenoid DCVs and
operation environment as they are less affected by high pneumatic actuators under the operation of PWM signal has
temperature, dust, corrosion, and other environmental been investigated in many researches[4-7] that leads to the
conditions[2]. In order to achieve tasks that involve determination of the solenoid valves dead-zone in which
positioning control with acceptable accuracy, servo and the valve output (O/P) is obscured for certain range of the
proportional valves are used with appropriate control PWM input (I/P) signal. Many operating schemes have
methods. However, this causes losing of the economical been developed to eliminate or minimize the dead-zone
advantage of using pneumatic systems due to the high cost region of solenoid valves[10]. In most of the aforementioned
of most of the pneumatic system components[3]. researches, the system behaviour and positioning control
Lately, researchers attempt to cut down the cost of accuracy were enhanced using sophisticated control
the servo-pneumatic systems by designing economical methods and algorithms, which were implemented using
systems with satisfactory accuracy. Binary (on/off) low high to moderate cost controllers.
cost directional control valves are used in pneumatic The key point in this paper is to present the development
positioning systems instead of expensive servo and of positioning control technique for a pneumatic double
proportional valves. However, using such valves increases acting cylinder that is used in an economical pneumatic

121 2357-0954 © 2020 The Military Technical College

 ESMT, Youssry et al., 2020
system employed in the field of cloth printing. The work laboratory, Military Technical College, as shown in figure
presented in this paper is considered as an extension of 1. It can be seen that the system main constituents are the
the parametric study presented by the authors in[1] for actuator which is a double acting cylinder with 125 mm
this economical industrial system. The presented control stroke length and the rod diameter is 25 mm. The linear
technique depends on modifying a PWM control algorithm motion of the piston is controlled by two commercial
via using optimum pneumatic parameters obtained from solenoid internally actuated pilot 3/2 pneumatic DCV. A
the performed parametric study. linear variable differential transducer (LVDT) WA100 is
The details of the system, the experimental test rig used to measure the position of the piston. The LVDT has
description, and system circuit diagram are presented in sensitivity of 80mV/V and a carrier frequency of 4.8kHz.
section 2 of this paper while section 3 reviews a glance of Two programmable Parker pressure transducers
the system mathematical model and the parametric study (SCPSD-016-14-15) are used to monitor the pressure
main results. The design of the modified PWM control in each chamber of the cylinder with output accuracy of
technique for this system is explained in details in section ±0.5% from the full scale of 16 bar. Another pressure
4. Results, data analysis and discussion which emphasize transducer (PES-110) is used to monitor the supply air
the importance of reducing the system nonlinearities pressure with accuracy of ±0.5% from the full scale of 16
and its influence on the system accuracy is presented in bar. A data acquisition card (DAQ); (NI- PCI-6033E) is
section 5. used for acquiring the sensors data with sample rate of 10
kHz and number of bits of 16. Recommended by the results
II. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND SYSTEM of the parametric study of the system[1], an accumulator is
DESCRIPTION used to the rod side chamber to decrease the nonlinearity
The experimental test rig for the pneumatic system associated with the backpressure. The system schematic
considered in this study is installed in the fluid control diagram is illustrated in figure 2.

Fig. 1: Experimental pneumatic circuit used to test the modified PWM controller 1-Air preparation unit, 2-Air distributing unit, 3, 4- 3/2
Solenoid DCV, 5-Double acting pneumatic cylinder, 6-Pressure transducer no.1, 7-Pressure transducer no.2, 8- Pressure transducer no.3,
9-LVDT, 10-Accumulator, 11-Pressure regulator.

Fig. 2: Pneumatic circuit diagram

122
 Engineering Science and Military Technologies
Volume (4) - Issue (1) - Mar 2020

III. MODELING OF THE PNEUMATIC SYSTEM based PWM control technique is developed by modifying
In order to enhance the pneumatic systems performance, the traditional PWM control algorithm to be used with
a better understanding of the system behaviour through maintaining a constant cylinder outlet pressure by taking
mathematical modeling and simulation is needed. Matlab® advantage of employing a dead-zone compensator (DZC)
Simscape has been used by many researchers as it offers along with using the optimum pneumatic parameters as
advanced and easy solutions to model and simulate recommended by the parametric study performed to the
pneumatic systems[8-10]. system.
Adopting the approach of physical network modeling Pneumatic drives are usually controlled by proportional
technique followed by many researches[11-15], the dynamic or servo valves for high accuracy of position control.
equations for the pneumatic system in this research have In these valves, continuous varying of the valve flow
been modeled and simulated using Matlab® Simscape resistance leads to vary the airflow mass that enters into
toolboxes and discussed in details in[1]. The model has and out from the actuator[15]. On/off solenoid DCV is used
been validated by comparing the predicted dynamic here to control the varied flow discretely. The airflow
behaviour of the system to the experimentally measured enters into or out from the actuator in form of packets.
one. A parametric study has been performed to understand If those packets are delivered faster than the actuator
the dynamic system behavior, determine the major dynamics, the actuator responds negatively to the average
affecting parameters, and configure the optimum operating mass flow rate that enters into or out from it. The desired
PWM frequency suitable for supply pressure and the PWM signal needed to control the solenoid valves can
corresponding effective duty cycle range. be realized by comparing the continuous control signal
The parametric study presented in[1] has shown that and a high-frequency carrier wave[8]. The carrier wave is
throttling the air flow to the cylinder inlet by adding a small usually a high-frequency tooth wave with a period T. The
orifice (with area of 1e-6 m2 and discharge coefficient frequency and amplitude of the carrier wave must vary
of 0.8) decreases the nonlinear effect of the air faster than those of the continuous signal. Following the
compressibility on the piston side pressure by about 80%. approach adopted in[7], the mathematical description of
However, the velocity of the piston is increased by about the used PWM signal here can be given by the following
130% at the recommended working supply pressure, which equations:
ranges from 2.5 to 4 bar, and consequently the pneumatic
system looses the high speed utility. In addition, the
(1)
parametric study has shown that using an accumulator of
1-liter volume and pressure of 1 bar to the rod side chamber
tends to decrease the backpressure nonlinearity for no less
than 50%.
(2)
Using a constant dead weight at rod-side would have
been a simple choice to maintain a constant force at rod-
side, however, the benefit of using the accumulator is to where Upwm is the PWM signal, Up is the maximum
maintain a constant pressure difference between both operating voltage, Vc is the voltage of the carrier wave,
cylinder’s sides at constant load with no sudden pressure Vd is the command signal voltage, j is the jth modulation
change. In addition, using a pressure regulator facilitates period.
investigation of the effect of different accumulator For valves operated by PWM signal, if the PWM
pressures on the positioning accuracy, as recommended in frequency is very high, the switching-on time will be less
previous studies[1]. than the valve delay time, so the valve will not respond and
Studying the valve response to PWM input signal has stay closed, also if the PWM frequency is too small, the
showed that the optimum PWM signal frequency to operate valve will stay off[8].
the valve is 20Hz and the corresponding effective range of This means that the modulating frequency should be
duty cycle is from 10% to 60% at 4 bar supply pressure. selected to ensure the valve opening for certain minimum
duty cycle andthe range of the effective duty cycle defined
IV. SYSTEM CONTROL STRATEGY
to determine the boundary of the valve dead-zone.
Previously in[1], two control methods have been used Also, it can help in avoiding of nonlinearity[9, 10].
to perform piston positioning control for the system in this Figure 3 (left) represents the dead-zone characteristics of a
research. The first method is a simple on/off control method single 3/2 solenoid valve where Uc is the valve input and Uv
(bang-bang control) which has shown an undesirable is the valve output and UcM is the minimum effective valve
effect of the DCV delay time on the system response. input and Sv is the slope of output. While figure 3 (right)
The traditional PWM based control method has been shows the graphical representation of the lookup table
applied to the system to enhance the dynamic behaviour for (DZC). The slope of the compensator output Uvc(es)
of the system, make a stable positioning, and to waive the and Uvc(eMax) are obtained using simulation-based tuning.
undesired behaviour of the bang-bang control method. Equation (3) represents the mathematical description of the
In this paper, the optimum pneumatic parameters dead-zone characteristics:

123
 ESMT, Youssry et al., 2020

V. DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

(3) Figure 5 shows the piston output position at constant

backpressure compared to the desired position, while
figure 6 shows actuator response vs. pressure response
using modified PWM control technique. It can be noticed
from figure 6 that adding accumulator at the rod side
reduces the backpressure variation (almost 2.5 bar), which
in turn reduces the nonlinearity of the system. From
figure 7 it can be inferred that steady state error is in range
of ±0.28 mm and mean error 0.43 mm which means that the
modified PWM control algorithm provides better position
accuracy (with maximum steady state error of 2.5 mm)
Fig. 3: Dead-zone characteristic (left), Graphical representation than that achieved using the conventional PWM algorithm
of DZC (right). used previously in[1] for the same system.
From figure (5-7), it can be concluded that this method
In order to compensate the valve dead-zone, a attains relatively high accuracy but with observable
dead-zone compensator (DZC) is employed in the modified overshoot. However, as the accumulator pressure increases
PWM algorithm. The DZC value is selected according to the overshoot decreases but with the increase of the steady
three conditions: state error, as can be noticed from figure 8. This can be
1. For a position error e equal or less than the desired probably due to that increasing the accumulator pressure
error ed, the input signal uc = zero. acts as cushion which damps the unexpected variance in
2. For a position error e greater than the desired motion.
error ed, the input signal uc > ucM. When accumulator pressure increased to (4 bar) the
3. For error e where, es ≥ e ≥ ed the compensator will steady state error becomes ±0.7 mm but with less overshoot
make output with slope Ss, and this area will be called and mean error 0.315 mm as illustrated in figure 9.
smoothness area; and the es is the error at this regime.
The DZC value is taken into consideration in the
control algorithm as a lookup table at the input of each
valve where its values are defined from the parametric
study results[1]. The desired positioning error ed is 0.1
mm corresponding to controller output (Duty cycle)
Uvc(ed) < 12%, smoothness area with es equal 2 mm,
controller output Uvc(es) < 20%, maximum controller output
Uvc(eMax) > 55%, and PWM frequency 20 Hz. The presented
control algorithm has been developed using Matlab®
Simulink toolbox and the corresponding systems are
implemented using commercial micro controller Arduino
board. Figure 4 represents a scheme for the modified PWM Fig. 5: Actuator response using modified PWM algorithm at
algorithm on Matlab® Simulink toolbox. The control Pac =2.5 bar
algorithm is developed with Arduino target toolbox
through Simulink® environment using the same structure
block that is used to build the system model on Simscape®
environment.

Fig. 6: Actuator response vs. pressure response with modified

Fig. 4: Matlab® Simulink scheme for modified PWM controller PWM control algorithm

124
 Engineering Science and Military Technologies
Volume (4) - Issue (1) - Mar 2020

in the operation nature of the valve and its characteristics,

specially the dead-zone which is reduced by adding
dead-zone compensator in the proposed control
algorithm[1, 16].
Operating solenoid valves using PWM signal increases
it temperature, and this is a general drawback of using
PWM which is a reason of choosing a low-cost solenoid.
The variation in the solenoid temperature has not been
investigated in this study and can be further investigated
in the future.

Fig. 7: Position error using modified PWM algorithm at Pac=2.5 VI. CONCLUSION
bar.
This paper presents a modified PWM positioning
control algorithm for a double acting pneumatic cylinder
with acceptable accuracy that can be used to aid in replacing
of expensive pneumatic constituents by commercially low-
cost constituents. The modified PWM control algorithm
depends on employing dead-zone compensator along
with using the optimum pneumatic parameters values
gained from parametric study previous performed on the
system[1] to reduce the system nonlinearity associated with
its dynamics. Using the modified PWM control algorithm
enhances the performance of the system, which shows
good positioning accuracy, where the steady state error is
decreased from ±2.5 mm using traditional PWM control
Fig. 8: Actuator response at Ps=4 bar and Pac=4 bar.
algorithm[16] to ±0.28 mm .
The results show that increasing the accumulator
pressure enhances the system performance increasing in
the system damping characteristics, by 70%, the mean
error to as of 27%, and . These results ensure the capability
of the presented control method to improve the pneumatic
positioning systems performance by reducing system's
nonlinearities with less control algorithms complications.

VII. REFERENCES
[1] Youssry,A., Elmayyah, W., Mabrouk, M., and Mahgoub, M.,
"Parametric Study Of A Low Cost Pneumatic System Controlled By
On/Off Solenoid Valves", IJRET: International Journal of Research in
Engineering and Technology, 2016. Vol-05(Iss-03): p. 184-193.
Fig. 9: Position error using modified PWM algorithm [2] Mabrouk, M., and Ahmed Y. Abdel-Hamid, "Control of Polar
at Pac= 4bar. Robot Manipulator Subjected to Harmonic Excitation Using Low Cost
Controller," Lecture Notes in Engineering and Computer Science:
Discussing the effect of the load value and direction Proceedings of The World Congress on Engineering 2019, 3-5 July, 2019,
London, U.K., pp485-489.
on the system, the piston acceleration is decreased with [3] AbdelHamid, A., AbdelKader, H., and Mabrouk M., "Load Tracking
decreasing the pressure difference among both sides And Anti-Sway Control For Telescopic Rotary Crane", Proceedings of
when using a constant load. Consequently, at the same the ASME 2017 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and
Exposition, IMECE2017, November 3-9, 2017, Tampa, Florida, USA
pressure deference the acceleration is decreased further by [4] Chavoshian, M., Taghizadeh, M. and Mazare, M., "Hybrid Dynamic
increasing the load, which results in reducing the error at Neural Network and PID Control of Pneumatic Artificial Muscle Using
the expense of speed. the PSO Algorithm", Int. J. Autom. Comput. 17, 428–438, 2020. https://
doi.org/10.1007/s11633-019-1196-5.
Regarding the load direction, it can be noticed from the [5] Nguyen, T., Leavitt J. ; Jabbari F. ; Bobrow J.E., "Accurate sliding-
results that moving the load against the rod side reduces mode control of pneumatic systems using low-cost solenoid valves",
the overshoot and achieves smooth motion with almost the Mechatronics, IEEE/ASME Transactions on, 2007. 12(2): p. 216-219.
[6] Kunt, C. and Singh, R., "A linear time varying model for on-off
same accuracy. However, this conclusion needs further valve controlled pneumatic actuators", Journal of dynamic systems,
investigation in the future to determine the effect of the measurement, and control, 1990. 112(4): p. 740-747.
value of the pressure deference between cylinder sides. [7] Šitum, Ž., Novaković, B., and Petrić J., "Pneumatic Servodrives
Control Using On/Off Solenoid Valves", 7th Int. Conf. on Prod. Eng.
The system nonlinearity has been investigated CIM 2001.
thoroughly with the conclusion that the nonlinearity appears [8] Sorli, M, Figliolini, G., and Almondo A., "A. Mechatronic model and

125
 ESMT, Youssry et al., 2020
experimental validation of a pneumatic servo-solenoid valve", J Dyn Syst [13] Najjari, B., "Modelling and controller design
Meas Control 2010; 132(5): 054503. of electro-pneumatic actuator based on PWM",
[9] Shaalan, A., Badr, M., Al-Ameen, E.,"Motion control of Electro IAES International Journal of Robotics and Automation
pneumatic system on Directional Control Solenoid Valve", Internationa (IJRA), 2012. 1(3): p. 125-136.
Journal of Mechanical and Production Engineering Research and [14] Bone, G., "Position Control of Pneumatic Actuators Using Three-
development (IJMPERD), 2019. Mode Discrete-Valued Model Predictive Control" , Actuators 2019, 8, 56;
[10] Andrighetto, P.L., Valdiero, A., and Bavaresco, D.,"Dead-zone doi:10.3390/act8030056.
compensation in pneumatic servo systems", in ABCM Symposium Series [15] Zhang, X., Lu, Y., Li, Y. , Zhang, C., Wang, R., "Numerical
in Mechatronics. 2008. calculation and experimental study on response characteristics
[11] Salim, S., Rahmat, M., Faudzi, A., Ismail, Z., and Sunar, N., "Position of pneumatic solenoid valves", Measurement and Control 2019,
Control of Pneumatic Actuator Using Self-Regulation Nonlinear PID", Vol. 52(9-10) 1382–1393
Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 2014. 2014. [16] Messina, A., Giannoccaro, N., and Gentile, A., "Experimenting
[12] Kothapalli, G. and Hassan, M.Y., "Design of a neural network based and modelling the dynamics of pneumatic actuators controlled
intelligent PI controller for a pneumatic system", IAENG International by the pulse width modulation (PWM) technique", Mechatronics,
Journal of Computer Science, 2008. 35(2): p. 217-225. 2005. 15(7): p. 859-881.

126