Controller for Driving a Piezoelectric Actuator at Resonance

Unpredictable variations in resonance frequency are tracked.

A digital control system based partly on an extremum-seeking control algorithm tracks the changing resonance frequency of a piezoelectric actuator or an electrically similar electromechanical device that is driven by a sinusoidal excitation signal and is required to be maintained at or near resonance in the presence of uncertain, changing external loads and disturbances. Somewhat more specifically, on the basis of measurements of the performance of the actuator, this system repeatedly estimates the resonance frequency and alters the excitation frequency as needed to keep it at or near the resonance frequency. In the original application for which this controller was developed, the piezoelectric actuator is part of an ultrasonic/sonic drill/corer. Going beyond this application, the underlying principles of design and operation are generally applicable to tracking changing resonance frequencies of heavily perturbed harmonic oscillators.

Resonance-frequency-tracking analog electronic circuits are commercially available, but are not adequate for the present purpose for several reasons:

• The input/output characteristics of analog circuits tend to drift, often necessitating recalibration, especially whenever the same controller is used in driving a different resonator.
• In the case of an actuator in a system that has multiple modes characterized by different resonance frequencies, an analog controller can tune erroneously to one of the higher-frequency modes.
• The lack of programmability of analog controllers is problematic when faults occur, and is especially problematic for preventing tuning to a higher-frequency mode.

In contrast, a digital controller can be programmed to restrict itself to a specified frequency range and to maintain stability even when the affected resonator is driven at high power and subjected to uncertain disturbances and variable loads.

The present digital control system (see figure) is implemented by means of an algorithm that comprises three main subalgorithms: a hill-climbing control algorithm, an estimation-based extremum-seeking control (ESC) algorithm, and a supervisory algorithm. The hill-climbing algorithm is useful for coarse tracking to find and remain within the vicinity of the resonance. The ESC algorithm is not capable of coarse resonance tracking, but is capable of fine resonance tracking once the estimates of parameters generated by the hill-climbing algorithm have converged sufficiently. On the basis of the parameter-estimation errors, the supervisory algorithm switches operation to whichever of the other two algorithms performs best at a given time.