The purpose of this study is to develop a piezo injector driver for common-rail direct injection diesel engines. In this research, we analyzed the electrical and mechanical characteristics of the piezo actuator through experiments. Current flow and charging voltage of the piezo injector are controlled by the PWM signal of variable duty ratio in order to realize both fast response and low peak current. The optimal switching duty ratio was designed by modeling and analyzing of the piezo driver circuit. In order to avoid resonance and unacceptably long settling time, appropriate frequency range of the PWM signal was derived based on the driver circuit model. The developed injector driver was validated by experiments under various fuel rail pressure, injection duration, and charging voltage.
