PWM drive of IPMC actuators with the consideration of the capacitive impedance

摘要

This paper considers driving an Ionic Polymer-Metal Composite (IPMC) actuator using a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) amplifier, in order to shed light on the characteristics of PWM driving of IPMCs. Generally, it is said that an efficiency of a PWM amplifier is higher than that of a linear amplifier. However, high current flows across the IPMC in the use of a PWM amplifier, and it is supposed to become the power consumption high. We solve this problem by putting an inductor between the PWM amplifier and the IPMC. The simulation and the experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.