Sensorless Closed-Loop Control of Solenoid Actuators Using IDIM Technique

Electromechanical solenoids are widely used in the industrial field since they are offering a robust actuation principle with high forces and large strokes. For reliable position control of such kind of actuators, usually mechanical position sensors are required, which allow the solenoid to act as a linear servo actuator. Nevertheless, mechanical sensors increase the system size and cost significantly. In order to address this issue, this work uses a new sensorless control method named “Integrator-Based Direct Inductance Measurement” (IDIM), which is capable of estimating the actuator position without the injection of additional test voltages and without involving high computational effort. After the application of the IDIM technique on solenoids, this work proposes a sensorless closed-loop position controller, which is implemented and verified experimentally on a microcontroller-based embedded system.