Application of amplified piezoelectric actuators to the construction of gas valves

In past years, Amplified Piezoelectric Actuators (APA) have been applied to a variety of industrial applications that take advantage of their quick response and precise positioning capabilities. More recently, APA's have been integrated into valve designs to obtain both rapid and precise proportional flow control. This paper presents the design and measurement results of two gas valves that have recently been developed. The first gas valve uses a small APA that is driven by a switching amplifier to obtain a high frequency modulation. A frequency modulation higher than 400Hz, along with a stroke of 100μm, have been measured. These results show that such a design could be applied to fuel injection systems. The second gas valve is also based on an APA. It includes a linear amplifier and a servo controller to obtain an accurate proportional response dedicated to precise gas flow control. Such valves are interesting for instrumentation and space applications, where they can provide a linear and stable flow control. The low power consumption of the piezoelectric valve in space applications is an additional advantage. A stable flow of dry nitrogen ranging from 0.1sccm to 200sccm has been measured with an inlet pressure of 1bar. A variety of modeling tools has been used to design these valves: finite element modeling for the electro-mechanical aspects and for the contact mechanics between the poppet and the seat, as well as computational fluid dynamics for the flow simulation. These tools make it possible to modify the valve design in order to meet different requirements and serve other applications.