IOP PUBLISHING SMART MATERIALS AND STRUCTURES Smart Mater. Struct. 16 (2007) 1098–1108 doi:10.1088/0964-1726/16/4/019 Integral feedback control of a self-sensing magnetostrictive actuator

An essential reason for the increasing interest in magnetostrictive materials is the capability to perform sensing and actuation at the same time and in the same place. With these inherent sensory capabilities, the material can adopt both sensing and actuation functions in mechatronic systems. Operating in this way, these solid-state transducers are frequently termed ‘self-sensing actuators’. They support a miniaturized, simpler and cheaper mechatronic system design and are therefore regarded as a key technology in the 21st century. A central task in the development of the self-sensing magnetostrictive actuator was the separation of the sensing information from the actuation information contained in the magnetic flux measurement signal. In practice, however, due to the high input amplitudes undesired complex hysteresis and saturation nonlinearities appear, which make a separation of sensing information from actuation information with linear actuator models impossible. Therefore, a novel signal processing method based on hysteresi