Simulation, animation and program support for a high performance pneumatic force actuator system

Program support, simulation and the animation of dual action pneumatic actuators controlled with proportional spool valves are developed. Various factors are involved, such as time delay in the pneumatic lines, leakage between chambers, air compressibility in cylinder chambers as well as non-linear flow through the valve. Taking into account the complexity of the model, and the fact that it is described by partial different equations, it is important to develop the program support based on numerical methods for solving this kind of problems. Simulation and program support in Maple and Matlab programming languages are conducted, and the efficiency of the results is shown from the engineering point of view. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.