Experimental analysis on pneumatic flow control valve driven by PZT vibrator

Recently, pneumatic actuators are widely used in the automation machine equipments because they are simple, lightweight, and highly compliant. Valve that can realize a continuous flowing quantity control is necessary to control air actuators precisely, while in general, such a valve is large. This study aims at the development of a new flow control valve that has a lightweight and simple structure and uses piezoelectric oscillator which is driven at resonance mode and it can control flow-rate by controlling the amplitude of the particles excitation. The flow control valve in this report is 10 mm in diameter and 9 mm in height. We had already achieved ON/OFF control of large flowing quantity with the valve. In this report, we research dynamic characteristics and properties under high air pressure. As the results of experiments, we found that the valve response time is 29 ms and the valve vibration property changed under air pressure. We confirmed its mechanism and found condition to control flow rate continuously.