Proportional electro-hydraulic valves: An Embedded Model Control solution

Hierarchical control architectures are a common approach when hydraulic systems are under study; provided their multi-domain nature, the control scheme is commonly split into different hierarchical levels each one associated with a particular physical domain. This paper presents the application of a model-based control structure called Embedded Model Control (EMC) when a hierarchical scheme is implemented on an electro-hydraulic proportional valve. The overall control consists of two hierarchical loops: the inner loop is the solenoid current regulator with a closed loop bandwidth close to 1 kHz. The outer loop is a position tracking control, in charge of the accurate positioning of the spool with respect to valve openings. The paper addresses the outer loop, i.e., the tracking of mechanical spool position by using the EMC. Analysis and synthesis are presented as well as experimental results obtained from a test rig provided by an industrial manufacturer.