SIMULATION OF PNEUMATIC ACTUATION SYSTEMS USING SIMULINK^®

Gabriele Vassura

    This paper reports about a class-work performed by final-year mechanical engineering students at the University of Bologna in order to simulate the behaviour of on-off controlled pneumatic actuators. After a brief presentation of the main reasons why pneumatics is still a very important automation technique, some aspects and problems of simulation of such systems are discussed, focusing on the definition of a proper system model and on the influence of some critical parameters. The main features of a model developed by the students in Simulink is then briefly presented, together with some comments on the achieved results. Finally some considerations are drawn concerning the validity of the reported activity as to the teaching purposes.

Keywords: automation, pneumatic actuators, model simulation, SIMULINK

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