Comparison of sliding mode and state-feedback control applied to a partially treated actively constrained layer damped (ACLD) beam

In this research, a sliding mode control (SMC) was utilized in the control of a partially treated, actively constrained layer damped (ACLD), Timoshenko beam model. The resulting vibration control was compared to the vibration control achieved by a state-feedback linear quadratic regulator (LQR) for several loading conditions. An observer was designed and model order reduction (MOR) was performed to achieve a simplified, efficient, and more controllable finite element system model. As a result of model simplification, modeling errors in the form of unstructured uncertainties were introduced into the system. It was determined that the SMC and LQR achieved similar vibration control for all loading conditions when saturation limits were imposed. The saturation limits were enforced to replicate realistic voltage constraints. Saturation limits were then removed to investigate the ideal control action of the SMC and LQR. The ideal case revealed that the SMC achieved a significant reduction in the maximum deflection and settling time (as much as 37.44% and 16.61%, respectively) for all loading conditions when compared to the LQR. The improvement in response was due to the increase in control activity and the utilization of a robust control scheme in the presence of unstructured uncertainties

Optimal feedback control of undamped wave equations by solving a HJB equation

International audienceAn optimal fi nite-time horizon feedback control problem for (semi linear) wave equations is presented. The feedback law can be derived from the dynamic programming principle and requires to solve the evolutionary Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation. Classical discretization methods based on nite elements lead to approximated problems governed by ODEs in high dimensional space which makes infeasible the numerical resolution by HJB approach. In the present paper, an approximation based on spectral elements is used to discretize the wave equation. The e ffect of noise is considered and numerical simulations are presented to show the relevance of the approach

From plain visualisation to vibration sensing: using a camera to control the flexibilities in the ITER remote handling equipment

Thermonuclear fusion is expected to play a key role in the energy market during the second half of this century, reaching 20% of the electricity generation by 2100. For many years, fusion scientists and engineers have been developing the various technologies required to build nuclear power stations allowing a sustained fusion reaction. To the maximum possible extent, maintenance operations in fusion reactors are performed manually by qualified workers in full accordance with the "as low as reasonably achievable" (ALARA) principle. However, the option of hands-on maintenance becomes impractical, difficult or simply impossible in many circumstances, such as high biological dose rates. In this case, maintenance tasks will be performed with remote handling (RH) techniques. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITER, to be commissioned in southern France around 2025, will be the first fusion experiment producing more power from fusion than energy necessary to heat the plasma. Its main objective is “to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power for peaceful purposes”. However ITER represents an unequalled challenge in terms of RH system design, since it will be much more demanding and complex than any other remote maintenance system previously designed. The introduction of man-in-the-loop capabilities in the robotic systems designed for ITER maintenance would provide useful assistance during inspection, i.e. by providing the operator the ability and flexibility to locate and examine unplanned targets, or during handling operations, i.e. by making peg-in-hole tasks easier. Unfortunately, most transmission technologies able to withstand the very specific and extreme environmental conditions existing inside a fusion reactor are based on gears, screws, cables and chains, which make the whole system very flexible and subject to vibrations. This effect is further increased as structural parts of the maintenance equipment are generally lightweight and slender structures due to the size and the arduous accessibility to the reactor. Several methodologies aiming at avoiding or limiting the effects of vibrations on RH system performance have been investigated over the past decade. These methods often rely on the use of vibration sensors such as accelerometers. However, reviewing market shows that there is no commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) accelerometer that meets the very specific requirements for vibration sensing in the ITER in-vessel RH equipment (resilience to high total integrated dose, high sensitivity). The customisation and qualification of existing products or investigation of new concepts might be considered. However, these options would inevitably involve high development costs. While an extensive amount of work has been published on the modelling and control of flexible manipulators in the 1980s and 1990s, the possibility to use vision devices to stabilise an oscillating robotic arm has only been considered very recently and this promising solution has not been discussed at length. In parallel, recent developments on machine vision systems in nuclear environment have been very encouraging. Although they do not deal directly with vibration sensing, they open up new prospects in the use of radiation tolerant cameras. This thesis aims to demonstrate that vibration control of remote maintenance equipment operating in harsh environments such as ITER can be achieved without considering any extra sensor besides the embarked rad-hardened cameras that will inevitably be used to provide real-time visual feedback to the operators. In other words it is proposed to consider the radiation-tolerant vision devices as full sensors providing quantitative data that can be processed by the control scheme and not only as plain video feedback providing qualitative information. The work conducted within the present thesis has confirmed that methods based on the tracking of visual features from an unknown environment are effective candidates for the real-time control of vibrations. Oscillations induced at the end effector are estimated by exploiting a simple physical model of the manipulator. Using a camera mounted in an eye-in-hand configuration, this model is adjusted using direct measurement of the tip oscillations with respect to the static environment. The primary contribution of this thesis consists of implementing a markerless tracker to determine the velocity of a tip-mounted camera in an untrimmed environment in order to stabilise an oscillating long-reach robotic arm. In particular, this method implies modifying an existing online interaction matrix estimator to make it self-adjustable and deriving a multimode dynamic model of a flexible rotating beam. An innovative vision-based method using sinusoidal regression to sense low-frequency oscillations is also proposed and tested. Finally, the problem of online estimation of the image capture delay for visual servoing applications with high dynamics is addressed and an original approach based on the concept of cross-correlation is presented and experimentally validated

Model Based Control of Soft Robots: A Survey of the State of the Art and Open Challenges

Continuum soft robots are mechanical systems entirely made of continuously deformable elements. This design solution aims to bring robots closer to invertebrate animals and soft appendices of vertebrate animals (e.g., an elephant's trunk, a monkey's tail). This work aims to introduce the control theorist perspective to this novel development in robotics. We aim to remove the barriers to entry into this field by presenting existing results and future challenges using a unified language and within a coherent framework. Indeed, the main difficulty in entering this field is the wide variability of terminology and scientific backgrounds, making it quite hard to acquire a comprehensive view on the topic. Another limiting factor is that it is not obvious where to draw a clear line between the limitations imposed by the technology not being mature yet and the challenges intrinsic to this class of robots. In this work, we argue that the intrinsic effects are the continuum or multi-body dynamics, the presence of a non-negligible elastic potential field, and the variability in sensing and actuation strategies.Comment: 69 pages, 13 figure

Stability-Oriented Dynamics and Control of Complex Rigid-Flexible Mechanical Systems Using the Example of a Bucket-Wheel Excavator

Der Schwerpunkt dieser Arbeit liegt auf der Modellbildung und der Regelung von Schaufelradbaggerauslegern. Die Schaufelradbagger stellen eine besondere Art komplexer Maschinensysteme dar, die im Braunkohletagebau eingesetzt werden. Der Schaufelradausleger ist hierbei als dreidimensionaler elastischer Balken nach der EULER-BERNOULLI Balken-Hypothese modelliert. Durch den Erhalt von Termen höherer Ordnung in den nichtlinearen Relationen zwischen Verschiebung und Verzerrungen, sind Kopplungseffekte höherer Ordnung der gesamtheitlichen Verschiebung und der flexiblen Deformation mitberücksichtigt. Bei der Modellierung der geometrischen Nichtlinearität des dreidimensionalen elastischen Balkens wurde weiterhin die zusätzliche Elastizität von Hebekabeln miteinbezogen. Komplexere Bewegungen, speziell die geführte Bewegung in Kombination mit Grabkräften wurden aufgezeigt und diskutiert. Die Elastizität des Auslegers wurde in Bezug auf die Interaktion zwischen Schneidewerkzeug (Baggerschaufel) und Oberflächenmaterial berücksichtigt. Einflüsse von Kopplungen höherer Ordnung zwischen flexiblen Deformationen, Förderseilen und Grabgegenkräften auf das dynamische Verhalten des Schaufelradauslegers werden mithilfe intensiver Simulationsstudien dargestellt. Dynamische Phänomene, die sich aus den geometrischen und dynamischen Kopplungen höherer Ordnung ergeben, die der geführten Bewegung und den Grabgegenkräften ausgesetzt sind, wurden im Detail analysiert. Die destabilisierenden Einflüsse, die zu großen Deformationen des Systems führen, beruhen auf den oben genannten Kopplungen, werden in den Simulationsergebnissen gezeigt. Das entwickelte Model sowie die damit verbundene Abbildung des dynamischen Systems liefert somit eine gute Basis für weitere Untersuchungen der Systemstabilität in Zusammenhang mit den Grabgegenkräften. Das nichtlineare dynamische System des Schaufelradauslegers wird durch ein erweitertes lineares System mit Nichtlinearitäten eines passenden fiktiven Modells für die Ansteuerungsanalyse und Designzwecke approximiert. Ein PI-Beobachter wird basierend auf diesem erweiterten linearen System eingesetzt, der alle Zustände des Systems schätzen und das Zeitverhalten der Nichtlinearitten rekonstruiert. Von diesem Standpunkt aus ist die beobachtergestützte PI-Zustandsregelung in Kombination mit einer Störungs- Kompensationsregelung realisiert. Drei Störungs-Kompensationsregelungsansätze bestehen aus dem statischen Ansatz, dem Davison Ansatz und dem erweiterten Ansatz nach dem Davison wurden zur Kompensation der Nichtlinearitäten diskutiert. Anhand von Simulationsbeispielen wird die effiziente Unterdrückung von Vibrationen und der Systemstabilisierung des Schaufelradbaggers während des Grabprozesses gezeigt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der Davison Ansatz und der erweiterte Ansatz nach dem Davison die dynamische Verbesserung des Schwingungsverhaltens sowie Stabilisierung des Schaufelradbaggers gewähren können. Demnach kann die Produktivität und somit die Ertrag des Schaufelradbaggers erhöht werden.The focus of this thesis is the modeling and control of the boom of the Bucket-Wheel excavator, which represents a specific type of complex machine systems used in mining technology. Hereby the Bucket-Wheel boom is modeled as the three-dimensional flexible beam using the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory. Retaining higher-order terms in the nonlinear strain-displacement relationship, higher-order coupling effects between the overall motion and flexible deformations are considered in the modeling. Furthermore, the nonlinear modeling of the three-dimensional elastic boom is also considered with the additional elasticity of hoisting cables. More complex motions, especially the guided motion in combination with digging resistance forces, are mentioned and discussed. So far, the elasticity of the boom along with the interaction between the cutting head and the face material is taken into account. The effects of higher-order couplings between flexible deformations, hoisting cables, and digging resistance forces on dynamical responses of the Bucket-Wheel boom are illustrated by intensive simulation studies. Dynamic phenomena resulting from higher-order geometrical and dynamical couplings undergoing the guided motion and digging resistance forces are therefore analyzed in detail. The destabilizing effects leading to large deformations (may be critical) of the system due to the above mentioned couplings are shown in simulation results. Thus, the developed model as well as the related dynamic system representation gives a good base for the advanced study of the stability of the system in combination with the digging resistance forces. For control analysis and design purposes, the nonlinear dynamical system of the Bucket-Wheel boom is approximated by the extended linear system with nonlinearities modeled by a suitable fictitious model. Based on this extended linear system, a high-gain PI-Observer is applied to estimate all states of the system and to reconstruct the time behavior of the nonlinearities. From this point of view, a high-gain PI-Observer-based state feedback control is realized in combination with disturbance rejection control approaches. Three disturbance rejection control approaches including the static disturbance rejection control approach, Davison approach, and the extended approach of Davison are discussed for compensating nonlinearities. Simulation examples are included to illustrate the efficient suppression of vibrations as well as the stabilization of the system during the digging process of the Bucket-Wheel Excavator. The results show that the static disturbance rejection control approach cannot stabilize the system, while Davison approach and the extended approach of Davison can stabilize successfully the system with the suitable dynamic feedback terms. Consequently, application of these approaches can improve operating ranges of the Bucket-Wheel excavator. Therefore, an exploitation productivity of the Bucket-Wheel excavators can be increased

Active vibration control of a flexible robot link using piezoelectric actuators

Nuisance vibrations are a concern throughout the engineering realm, and many re-searchers are dedicated to finding a solution to attenuate them. This research primarily focusses upon the suppression of vibrations in a robot system, with the control system being designed so that it is both affordable and lightweight. Such constraints aim to provide a solution that may be utilised in a variety of applications. The utilisation of piezoelectric elements as both actuators and sensors provides several advantages in that they are lightweight, easily integrated into an existing system and have a good force to weight ratio when used as actuators. To read and control these elements a single board computer was employed, in acknowledgement of the constraining parameters of the design. The amalgamation of vibration control and robotics has lent to the re-search being conducted with separate objectives set, isolating certain elements of the overall system design for validation. Ultimately, these separate investigations progress to the integration of the robot and control systems prior to further research concerning nonlinear vibrations, dynamic control and the discrete-time domain modelling of the system.This research first investigates the viability of the chosen components as a vibration attenuation solution. In addition, analytical models of the system have been created, for two types of sensors to determine the most effective; an inertial measurement unit and a collocated pair of piezoelectric sensors. These models are based on Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and aim to validate the control theory through a comparison of the experimental data. These experiments isolate the vibration problem from a robot system through the investigation of the control of a long slender beam envisioned as a robot manipulator link, but excited using a shaker platform in a sinusoidal manner. An observation of the theory related to the voltage produced by the piezoelectric elements, suggests that even with the application of only proportional control by the system, the controlled output would have components indicative of both proportional and derivative control. This observation and the underlying theory are further analysed within this research.The next objectives are to compare the performance of the control system developed in this research which utilises a Raspberry Pi 3B+ [1] with one that employs a dSPACE MicroLabBox [2], and to determine the suitability of the former for use with robot sys-tems. With the former ensuring that the constraints placed on the design, those which influenced the selection of the components, does not conclude to the dSPACE Micro-LabBox system being overtly preferable. The latter investigates both the impact of the system’s inclusion on the functionality of the system and the system’s perform-ance with respect to the intended application. The KUKA LBR iiwa 7 R800 [3] robot manipulator is utilised to satisfy this objective, wherein the link is mounted on the end effector of the manipulator acting as an eighth link. The final investigation in this research pertains to the attenuation of nonlinear vibrations experienced by a robot manipulator link. Additional components were added to the link to induce a geometric nonlinearity in the system. An analytical model of the amended system was created to validate the theory through comparison with experimental results. The control system was employed for multiple cases to ascertain the level of its performance with regards to the suppression of nonlinear vibrations

A new operability and predictability enhanced riser control system for deepwater marine operation: an integrated riser hybrid tensioning system

This dissertation presents a novel riser hybrid tensioning system by integrating an electrically powered riser tensioning system into existing hydro-pneumatic tensioners. Compared to current passive hydro-pneumatic tensioners, this new riser hybrid tensioning system provides the capability of dynamically controlling the tension in the riser string. This feature opens a wide horizon of different active riser control strategies to achieve the systematic riser control solution. The objective of this study is to increase the predictability and safety of the whole riser system, and to extend the operability of the riser tensioning system into other operations. An overall structure framework of this novel hybrid riser tensioning system is proposed, comprising a direct driven electrical tensioners, hydro-pneumatic tensioners, a super-capacitor based energy storage system, power dissipaters, an overall tension controller and a power management controller. Hardware configurations are suggested. A riser data logging system is introduced, providing more comprehensive riser status data. A power management control strategy and overall coordination architecture to integrate the whole system are proposed. As the main functionality of the riser tensioning system, a new active heave compensation control strategy is analyzed in detail, by using this new riser hybrid tensioning system. A LQG controller and a H [subscript infinity symbol] controller are designed. The position chasing technique produces predictive and accurate tension commands for the electrical tensioners. Both Matlab simulation and hardware implementation confirm the feasibility of this concept, and further verifies that a more accurate control performance could be achieved by the electrical tensioners 180° compensating the tension fluctuation caused by the hydro-pneumatic tensioners. A novel testability and predictability enhanced anti-recoil control algorithm is implemented in the electrical tensioners. A position control strategy is proposed with the objective of moving the riser body to a desired elevation height in a predictive manner. A system model and a Kalman estimator are built, and a LQG controller is designed. The simulation demonstrates that the riser lifting height can adjust to any reasonable value for different test environment. This anti-recoil control concept reduces the risk of catastrophic damage, and allows us to perform maintenance tests much more frequently to bring back operator’s confidence. During harsh sea state, the VIV can be suppressed by using the dynamic control of the hybrid tensioning system, at frequencies and magnitudes made available by the electrical tensioning system. The objective is to achieve the VIV suppression by avoiding the excitation of the oscillation locking into the resonance conditions, and by reducing oscillation energy to be built in riser. A modal analysis of a tensioned Euler-Bernoulli beam is studied. Two control methods are proposed. Simulations results demonstrate that the oscillation is effectively reduced at the dominant lock-in frequency. Finally, this riser hybrid tensioning system opens the possibility to extend the tensioning system operability into other drilling operations. A motion stabilizer supporting the heave compensation of the drill pipes and the DST tools can be eliminated by connecting the drill pipes onto the telescopic joint. Another application would be that the electrical tensioners can run under position control mode after the riser is recoiled and soft hang-off on tensioners. The riser string position with respect to the seabed can still be controlled, during the vessel moving among different well heads.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Optimal vibration suppression of beam-type structures using passive and semi-active tuned mass dampers

The overall aim of this dissertation is to conduct a comprehensive investigation on the design optimization for passive and semi-active vibration suppression of beam-type structures utilizing the Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) and Semi-Active Mass Damper (SAMD) to prevent discomfort, damage or outright structural failure through dissipating the vibratory energy effectively. The finite element model for general curved beams with variable curvatures under different assumptions (including/excluding the effects of the axial extensibility, shear deformation and rotary inertia) are developed and then utilized to solve the governing differential equations of motion for beam-type structures with the attached TMD system. The developed equations of motion in finite element form are then solved through the random vibration state-space analysis method to effectively find the variance of response under stationary random loading. A hybrid optimization methodology, which combines the global optimization method based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) and the powerful local optimization method based on Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP), is developed and then utilized to find the optimal design parameters (damping, stiffness and position) of the attached single and multiple TMD systems. Based on the extensive numerical investigation, a design framework for vibration suppression of beam-type structures using TMD technology is then presented. An in-house experimental set-up is designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed optimal design approach for vibration suppression of beam-type structures using TMD technology. Next, the Magneto-Rheological (MR) fluid damper is utilized to design the SAMD system. A new hysteresis model based on the LuGre friction model is developed to analyze the dynamic behavior of large-scale MR-damper (MR-9000 type) accurately and efficiently. The gradient based optimization technique and least square estimation method have been utilized to identify the characteristic parameters of MR-damper. Moreover, based on the developed hysteresis model, an effective inverse MR-damper model has also been proposed, which can be readily used in the design of semi-active vibration suppression devices. The controller for SAMD system using MR-damper is designed based on the proposed inverse MR-damper model and H2 /LQG controller design methodology. The developed SAMD system along with the MR-damper model is then implemented to beam-type structures to suppress the vibration. It has been shown that the designed SAMD system using MR-damper can effectively suppress the vibration in a robust and fail-safe manner