Growing needs for precise manipulation in medical surgery, manufacturing automation and structural health monitoring have motivated development of high accuracy, bandwidth and cost-effective sensing systems. Among these is a class of multi-axis electromagnetic devices where embedded magnetic fields can be capitalized for compact position estimation eliminating unwanted friction, stiction and inertia arising from dedicated and separate sensing mechanisms. Using fields for position measurements, however, is a challenging 'inverse problem' since they are often modeled in the 'forward' sense and their inverse solutions are often highly non-linear and non-unique. A general method to design a multisensor system that capitalizes on the existing magnetic field in permanent magnet (PM) actuators is presented. This method takes advantage of the structural field symmetry and meticulous placement of sensors to discretize the motion range of a PM-based device into smaller magnetic field segments, thereby reducing the required characterization domain. Within these localized segments, unique field-position correspondence is induced using field measurements from a network of multiple-axis sensors. A direct mapping approach utilizing trained artificial neural networks to attain multi-DOF positional information from distributed field measurements is employed as an alternative to existing computationally intensive model based methods which are unsuitable for real-time control implementation. Validation and evaluation of this technique are performed through field simulations and experimental investigation on an electromagnetic spherical actuator. An inclinometer was used as a performance comparison and experimental results have corroborated the superior tracking ability of the field-based sensing system. While the immediate application is field-based orientation determination of an electromagnetic actuator, it is expected that the design method can be extended to develop other sensing systems that harnesses other scalar, vector and tensor fields.

Submitted by Maria Suzana Diniz (msuzanad@hotmail.com) on 2015-11-11T13:50:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3438463 bytes, checksum: 58df13a5453da33ec72ad547b4ea7d40 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-11-11T13:50:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3438463 bytes, checksum: 58df13a5453da33ec72ad547b4ea7d40 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-04 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The use of ferromagnetic materials such as steel have been abundant in products and manufacturing equipment due to their magnetic properties, which generates an interaction between them and the applied magnetic fields. This interaction has been studied for the development of Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) used to detect cracks, heterogeneity, degree of deformation and accompanying precipitation of desirable and / or undesirable phases in materials. In this work a NDT technique based on the application of magnetic fields in the region of reversal of the magnetic materials has been developed. There were compared an SAE 1045 steel and an ASTM 6261 aluminum alloy, being then classified as paramagnetic and ferromagnetic, respectively. It was tried to knowledge of how the variables metallographic geometry and texture could interfere with magnetic induction (B) in these materials. It was determined the values of H and optimum thickness, the equations relating the geometry, thickness, and shape of the samples had magnetic anisotropy and rotating the samples. The technique proved promising with both materials interacted with the magnetic field applied by working in a common region for the two materials magnetization, the magnetic region of reversibility. The method was sensitive to metallographic texture, being promising for determining the best direction of magnetization in materials for electrical purposes. The geometry of the samples influenced the amount of magnetic induction, carrying out mathematical corrections for the comparison of different shapes, sizes, thicknesses and materials is required. For the SAE 1045 steel was magnetic anisotropy due to the existence of metallographic texture from the manufacturing process by rolling steel. For aluminum ASTM 6261 did not occur in magnetic anisotropy due to the lack of metallographic texture. / O uso de materiais ferromagnéticos como o aço tem sido abundante na fabricação de produtos e equipamentos devido às suas propriedades magnéticas, que gera uma interação entre eles e os campos magnéticos aplicados. Essa interação tem sido estudada para o desenvolvimento de Ensaios Não Destrutivos (END) utilizados na detecção de trincas, heterogeneidades, grau de deformação e acompanhamento da precipitação de fases desejáveis e/ou indesejáveis em materiais. Neste trabalho foi desenvolvida uma técnica END baseada na aplicação de campos magnéticos na região de reversibilidade magnética dos materiais. Foram comparados um aço SAE 1045 e uma liga de alumínio ASTM 6261, sendo eles classificados como ferromagnético e paramagnético, respectivamente. Buscou-se o conhecimento de como as variáveis geometria e textura metalográfica poderiam interferir nas respostas de campo magnético induzido (B) nestes materiais. Determinaram-se os valores de H e espessuras ideais, as equações que relacionam geometria, espessura e formato das amostras e se havia anisotropia magnética rotacionando as amostras. A técnica se mostrou promissora, tendo ambos os materiais interagido com o campo magnético aplicado por se trabalhar em uma região de magnetização comum aos dois materiais, a região de reversibilidade magnética. O método se mostrou sensível à textura metalográfica, sendo promissora para a determinação da direção de melhor magnetização em materiais para fins elétricos. A geometria das amostras influenciou no valor de campo magnético induzido, sendo necessária a realização de correções matemáticas para a comparação de materiais de diferentes formatos, espessuras e tamanhos. Para o aço SAE 1045 ocorreu anisotropia magnética em virtude da existência de textura metalográfica proveniente do processo de fabricação por laminação do aço. Para o alumínio ASTM 6261 não ocorreu anisotropia magnética em virtude da inexistência de textura metalográfica.

This Master’s thesis contains an overview of determining measurement uncertainties of direct and indirect measurements. It describes a way of creating a magnetic field with the help of Helmholtz coil and a more detailed description of some principles of magnetic field sensors. This thesis also contains a description of the experiments and the factors influencing them. The last part deals with the quantification of uncertainties from measured experiments and with the discussion of the results from these measurements.