Development of a Charge Estimator for Piezoelectric Actuators: A Radial Basis Function Approach

Charge of a piezoelectric actuator is proportional to its displacement for a wide area of operating. Hence, a charge estimator can estimate displacement for such actuators. However, existing charge estimators take a sizable portion of the excitation voltage, i.e. voltage drop. Digital charge estimators have presented the smallest voltage drop. This article first investigates digital charge estimators and suggests a design guideline to (i) maximise accuracy and (ii) minimise the voltage drop. Digital charge estimators have a sensing resistor; an estimator with a constant resistance is shown to violate the design guideline; while, all existing digital charge estimators use one or a few intuitively chosen resistors. That is, existing estimators witness unnecessarily large inaccuracy and/or voltage drop. This research develops charge estimators with varying resistors, fulfilling the design guideline. Several methods are tested to estimates the sensing resistance based on operating conditions, and radial basis function networks models excel in terms of accuracy.