Exploring the Pareto Fronts of Actuation Technologies for High Performance Mechatronic Systems

In the course of designing high performance mechatronic scanning systems typically several conflicting requirements, such as speed and range, must be met at the same time. Actuators are a key component in this relation, as depending on the system specifications, different actuation technologies may prove advantageous. Due to the large number of design parameters a comprehensive and general comparison of actuation technologies across various mechatronic system classes is, however, difficult. This article proposes a novel method for estimating the limitations of individual actuation technologies for a desired system class based on analytically obtained relations, which can be used to systematically tradeoff desired range and speed specifications in the design phase. The method is presented along the example class of fast steering mirrors (FSMs) with the tradeoff limit curves (Pareto fronts) estimated for the established piezo (PZ) electric, Lorentz force and hybrid reluctance (HR) actuation technologies. The classification is validated against the results of a thorough review of reported FSM system specifications. The obtained results clearly suggest that PZ actuated FSMs have smaller ranges but are superior to Lorentz force actuated FSMs for bandwidths larger than 2 kHz and ranges below 20 mrad. The estimated Pareto front for FSMs with the least common HR technology further suggest that this technology is superior to both of the other technologies for FSMs with a bandwidth above 700 Hz and angular ranges below 120 mrad.