CIRCUIT FOR CONTROLLING THE CURRENT IN INDUCTIVE LOADS AND CONTROL METHOD THEREFOR

Circuit for controlling the current in inductive loads, in particular electro-mechanical valves comprising a coil, comprising a driver circuit (20; 30) to drive a load current (I load ) in said inductive load (50), said driver circuit (20; 30) including a pair of low side and a high side driving switches (11, 22) obtained by a controllable switch (11), in particular a MOSFET, which is switched on to increase a load current flowing in the inductive load (50), and by a recirculation diode (22) arranged to re-circulate the load current (I load ) when the controllable switch is switched off, said controlling circuit including a control module (25; 35) generating a control signal (CMD) to switch on and off the controllable switch (11). In the solution described, said control module (35) includes a PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) current controller module (35), comprising a negative feedback closed loop comprising a module implementing at least a proportional control action and a integral control action feeding a PWM modulator module, said PWM current controller module (35) receiving as feedback loop setpoint a target current value (I target ) and as feedback measured value of the loop an estimated value (I mid ) of the current flowing in the load (I LS ) during a measurement PWM cycle (i+1), said PWM current controller module (35) being configured to generate said control signal (CMD) for a control input of the controllable switch (11) on the basis of an error (I error ) between said target current (I target ) and said estimate (I mid ) of the current (I LS ) flowing in the load (50).