A Novel Prototype of Diaphragm Valve for Passively Compensated Aerostatic Pads

Thanks to their low friction, aerostatic pads are currently used in many high precision applications. However, due to the air compressibility, aerostatic bearings suffer from relatively low stiffness and damping. Active and passive compensation methods represent a valuable solution to reduce these limitations. This paper presents a novel prototype of a diaphragm valve for passively compensated aerostatic pads. The proposed valve was obtained through the improvements of a previous prototype. The main goal of this new design of the valve was to improve the reliability, repeatability and accuracy of regulation. The novel prototype is modelled through the same lumped parameter model that was used for the previous prototype. The preliminary experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed valve.