Hydraulic amplifier design and its application to direct drive valve based on magnetostrictive actuator

• A direct drive valve is developed based on hydraulic amplified magnetostrictive actuator.
• The piston and chamber is modified to achieve higher performance of hydraulic amplifier.
• The coupling model of proposed direct drive valve is established and simulated in AMESim.
• A prototype is produced and tested to validate the established model of designed valve.

A new type of direct drive valve based on giant magnetostrictive material is designed. Comparing to traditional servo valves, the frequency response is improved with a considerable flow rate. A hydraulic amplifier with flexible pistons is applied on the designed valve; its structure is optimized through elasticity mechanic theory, finite element method and CFD method. The valve is modeled in AMESim and a prototype is produced. Through simulation and experiments, the bandwidth of the designed valve is above 100 Hz while its flow reaches 30 L/min.