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.