The new range of linear amplifiers for piezoelectric actuators, comprising the Pla05 and Pls25, has reached a major milestone: Sporting its new look in line with CTEC’s design guidelines, it has obtained CE marking, ensuring full compliance with strict European safety, health, and environmental standards. In practical terms, this CE marking provides users with numerous guarantees, particularly regarding their electrical safety. As these are power electronics for piezoelectric actuators, obtaining this marking required significant design and testing efforts. In addition to meeting CE marking requirements, the design of these products leveraged the 20-year legacy of the LA75B and LS75C electronics, well-known to CTEC customers, while incorporating improvements.

Like the LA75 series, and ensuring complete compatibility for the user, the Pla05 and Pls25 are designed for CTEC piezoelectric actuators, the well-known APA and PPA, as well as the mechanisms or motors that utilize these actuators: DTT, P-FSM, XY, MSPA, etc. They provide voltage control on 170V span, variable from -20V to +150V, to utilize the full actuation range of CTEC products.

The maximum currents already offered by the LA75B and LA75C are also provided by the Pla05 and Pla25, while also offering CE marking: The Pla05 delivers a continuous current of 0.5 A and a peak current of 1 A, like the LA75B. The Pla25 delivers a continuous current of 2.5 A and a peak current of 5 A, like the LA75C. These high currents allow the unique dynamic capabilities of CTEC actuators to be fully utilized. These dynamic capabilities translate into high bandwidths and very short response times.

Not only do the Pla05 and Pla25 perform as well as the LA series, but they also offer additional advantages:

• A significantly more compact footprint

• The ability to be combined in a master/slave topology for multi-channel or push-pull configurations

• A signal-to-noise ratio superior to that of the LA75 series, ensuring better resolution and greater positioning accuracy for actuators and piezoelectric mechanisms

• The ability to add sensor conditioners, controllers, and communication modules

• A new optional controller integrating a PID regulator and various stabilization filters, including band-stop filters to mitigate problems related to resonant frequencies

• An optional communication module offering higher communication speeds.

Finally, and most importantly, it is more economical.

In addition to the tests required for CE marking, the Pla05 and Pla25 underwent extensive testing at CTEC, in an independent certification laboratory, and at pilot customer sites.

For example, demanding customer tests were successfully conducted as part of the ACONIT project by the Werner Heisenberg Institute for Jet Propulsion at the University of Munich, based in Neubiberg, Germany. In this project, CTEC supplied 17 PJA pulsed jet actuators and a rack of 17 PLa25 actuators to power the PJAs.

A PJA is a fast-acting piezo valve composed of two APA400MML actuators. As per the specification of the Jet Propulsion Institute, the Pla25 actuators were required to power the PJAs at full on/off at 200Hz, with switching times of 1ms. Given the capacitance of over 6µF of each APA400MML, this very short response time requires a current of 2.5A, utilizing the full potential of the Pla25.

The objective of these PJAs was to improve the performance of a LARZAC aircraft turbojet engine. It should be noted that the PJAs were exposed to a temperature of over 300°C during the engine operations.

This objective was fully achieved because the PJAs powered with the Pla25s allowed the engine’s operating limits to be extended by 99%!

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