A high speed electro-hydraulic no leakage servo valve using multilayered piezoelectric devices (PZT) and an observer

In this study, a high-speed servo valve with no outer leakage is developed, which is used to drive flexible hydraulic actuators (FHA) for extreme environments. In the valve, multilayered PZT devices are used to drive a spool directly and quickly. A bellows is also used to prevent outer leak from the clearance between the spool and the sleeve. Employing a disturbance observer, the lack of the system damping of the valve is improved by feeding back the estimated velocity of the spool, as well as the estimated disturbance is fed back to eliminate effectively the hysteresis between input voltage and output displacement of the PZT devices.