Unified coil solenoid actuator for aerospace application

Abstract

Solenoid is an electromagnetically operated actuator. One of the typical applications of solenoid is to operate valves in aircraft engine under harsh environmental conditions and high endurance requirements. Solenoid coil is wound around an insulator (e.g. PTFE / Polyimide/ Nomex etc) which is generally called as bobbin. Classical bobbin construction reduces the available window area for the coil winding. This successively reduces the number of turns that can be accommodated in the reduced window area. MMF (Magneto Motive Force) is the product of the number of turns and the magnitude of the coil current. Due to reduction in the MMF, the magnetic field strength of the solenoid reduces and the force generated by the solenoid gets decreased. The proposed topology of the solenoid eliminates the bobbin for reducing the size of solenoid coils or in other words more window area is available against the classical bobbin designs. The proposed method aims at generating higher force for the constrained size or generating the same force with less size and weight of the solenoid.