Soft-landing control for sensorless electromagnetical spring-mass actuators

A main class of electromagnetical actuators based on the spring-mass-resonator principle. These actuators generally suffer from strong armature impacts at the stop positions. In order to improve noise emission and durability a soft-landing control is required. The sensorless control algorithm was optimized for these demands. Instead of a sensor, the electrical signals of the magnet coils provide the control information, thus hardware effort and costs are substantially reduced. Furthermore, the sensorless control is independent of the actuator geometry and works with rotational armature movement as well as with linear movement. Algorithm and hardware are optimized for low energy consumption and show high robustness against disturbances.