Performance Tests of a Monitoring-Management System of Actuators for the FAST

There are high standards for the actuators of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). In the past tests, we usually only used inconvenient human inspection for recording states of the actuators. We assess the requirements on the actuators for the FAST. For testing the actuator we have further designed a monitoring-management system that can measure the current, power, temperature, load, displacement, and limit of an actuator. The system can automatically monitor and record, avoiding the inconvenience of human inspection. We chose appropriate sensors for the system and fabricated it following the structural design. We have tested the system using certain equipments. This system has achieved online monitoring of the actuators and successfully passed tests of supervision of the actuators without human intervention. The tests have generated many data showing the reliability and effectiveness of the system. In addition, the system has dramatic improvement in accuracies and maintenance of historical-information records. Long-term tests of the system have shown its satisfactory performance.