Observer-based anti-windup compensator design for saturated control systems using an LMI approach

AbstractIn practical control systems, actuator saturation usually induces a windup phenomenon and potentially results in system instability. Accordingly, this paper develops an observer-based auxiliary anti-windup compensation scheme to mitigate the effects of actuator limitations on the performance and stability of the controlled system. In the proposed approach, the controller output signal passing through the saturation element is treated as an external disturbance imported to the designed controller and an auxiliary controller is designed to minimize the difference between the controller output signal and the system input signal. The conditions required to maintain the system performance in the presence of actuator saturation are formulated as an LMI criterion. The L2-stability criterion of the anti-windup compensator design is also formulated as an LMI condition. It is shown that by integrating the two LMI conditions and solving the resulting optimization problem, the resulting anti-windup controller both minimizes the performance attenuation of the saturated control system and guarantees its L2-stability

Nonlinear constrained and saturated control of power electronics and electromechanical systems

Power electronic converters are extensively adopted for the solution of timely issues, such as power quality improvement in industrial plants, energy management in hybrid electrical systems, and control of electrical generators for renewables. Beside nonlinearity, this systems are typically characterized by hard constraints on the control inputs, and sometimes the state variables. In this respect, control laws able to handle input saturation are crucial to formally characterize the systems stability and performance properties. From a practical viewpoint, a proper saturation management allows to extend the systems transient and steady-state operating ranges, improving their reliability and availability. The main topic of this thesis concern saturated control methodologies, based on modern approaches, applied to power electronics and electromechanical systems. The pursued objective is to provide formal results under any saturation scenario, overcoming the drawbacks of the classic solution commonly applied to cope with saturation of power converters, and enhancing performance. For this purpose two main approaches are exploited and extended to deal with power electronic applications: modern anti-windup strategies, providing formal results and systematic design rules for the anti-windup compensator, devoted to handle control saturation, and “one step” saturated feedback design techniques, relying on a suitable characterization of the saturation nonlinearity and less conservative extensions of standard absolute stability theory results. The first part of the thesis is devoted to present and develop a novel general anti-windup scheme, which is then specifically applied to a class of power converters adopted for power quality enhancement in industrial plants. In the second part a polytopic differential inclusion representation of saturation nonlinearity is presented and extended to deal with a class of multiple input power converters, used to manage hybrid electrical energy sources. The third part regards adaptive observers design for robust estimation of the parameters required for high performance control of power systems

Control of Systems with Limited Capacity

Virtually all real life systems are such that they present some kind of limitation on one or many of its variables, physical quantities. These systems are designated in this thesis as systems with limited capacity. This work is treating control related problems of a subclass of such systems, where the limitation is a critical factor. The thesis is composed of four parts. The first part is treating the control of tire slip in a braking car. The Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) is an important component of a complex steering system for the modern car. In the latest generation of brake-by-wire systems, the controllers have to maintain a specified tire slip for each wheel during braking. This thesis proposes a design model and based on that a hybrid controller that regulates the tire-slip. Simulation and results from drive tests are presented. In the second part, a design method for robust PID controllers is presented for a class of systems with limited capacity. Robustness is ensured with respect to a cone bounded static nonlinearity acting on the plant. Additional constraints on maximum sensitivity are also considered. The design procedure has been successfully applied in the synthesis of the proposed ABS controller. The third part studies the trajectory convergence for a general class of nonlinear systems. The servo problem for piecewise linear systems is presented. Convex optimization is used to describe the behavior of system trajectories of a piecewise linear system with respect to some input signals. The obtained results are then applied for the study of anti-windup compensators. The last part of the thesis is treating the problem of voltage stability in power systems. Voltage at the load end of a power system has to be controlled within prescribed tolerances. In case of emergencies such as sudden line failures, this task ca n be very challenging. The main contribution of this chapter is a method for improving the stability properties of the power system by dynamic compensation of the reference load voltage. Moreover, a complete compensation scheme is proposed where load shedding is the secondary control variable. This control scheme is shown to stabilize different power system models

Adaptive control and parameter-dependent anti-windup compensation for inertia varying quadcopters.

A novel parameter-dependent anti-windup compensator is developed to improve the performance of a saturation constrained model reference adaptive controller. The combined control structure solves the input saturation and stability problem for inertia varying quadcopters. The control synthesis follows the conventional two-step anti-windup design paradigm where a nominal controller is designed without consideration of the input saturation, and the anti-windup compensator is designed to minimize deviations from nominal performance caused by saturated inputs. To account for varying inertia of the quadcopter during package retrieval/delivery routines, the inertia parameters of the vehicle/package are estimated with an online recursive system identification technique, and these estimates are used to schedule the parameter-dependent anti-windup compensator. The performance and stability conditions of the parameter-dependent anti-windup compensator are formulated as a set of parameter-dependent linear matrix inequalities. When solved, the linear matrix inequalities yield a gain-scheduled anti-windup compensator that ensures stability and minimizes the deviation from nominal model reference adaptive control performance when saturation occurs. The effectiveness of the combined control scheme is demonstrated by simulations of an input constrained quadcopter lifting a payload of unknown mass

Output regulation of rational nonlinear systems with input saturation

This thesis deals with the output regulation of rational nonlinear systems with input saturation. The output regulation problem considers a controlled plant subject to non-vanishing perturbations or reference signals produced by an exogenous autonomous system, where the goal is to ensure asymptotic convergence to zero of the plant output error. This work develops systematic methodologies for stability analysis and design of anti-windup compensated dynamic output feedback stabilizing controllers able to solve the output regulation problem for rational nonlinear systems with saturating inputs. In order to obtain these results, the proposed method employs the differential-algebraic representation, a theoretical framework that treats rational nonlinear systems by a differential equation combined with an equality relation. This tool is utilized in order to cast the stability analysis and control synthesis into optimization problems subject to linear matrix inequality constraints. Towards ensuring asymptotic output regulation, it is initially assumed the prior knowledge of an exact solution to the regulator equations, which represent an invariant and zero-error steady-state manifold. This assumption is later relaxed, where the results are extended for the practical regulation problem. In this last scenario, any numerically approximated solution to the regulator equations may be considered and the devised methodology ensures ultimate boundedness of the output error. Overall, the main innovation of this thesis is the application of the differential-algebraic representation into the nonlinear output regulation context, in turn providing a solution to a new set of problems intractable by state-of-the-art nonlinear methods.Esta tese trata da regulação de saída de sistemas não-lineares racionais com saturação na entrada. O problema de regulação de saída considera uma planta sujeita a sinais persistentes de distúrbio ou referência produzidos por um sistema exógeno autônomo, onde o objetivo é garantir a convergência assintótica do erro de saída da planta para zero. Este trabalho desenvolve metodologias sistemáticas para análise de estabilidade e projeto de controladores estabilizantes dinâmicos de realimentação de saída com compensadores anti-windup para sistemas não-lineares racionais com saturação no contexto de regulação de saída. O método proposto utiliza principalmente a representação algébrico-diferencial, uma abordagem teórica que trata sistemas não-lineares racionais por meio de uma equação diferencial combinada com uma igualdade algébrica. Para assegurar a regulação assintótica de saída, inicialmente assume-se o conhecimento de um modelo interno e uma solução exata para as equações do regulador, que representa um conjunto invariante de regime permanente onde o erro de saída é zero. Esta suposição é posteriormente relaxada, onde os resultados são estendidos para o contexto de regulação de saída prática. Os desenvolvimentos principais desta tese estão divididos nos seguintes capítulos: Regulação de Saída de Sistemas Não-Lineares Racionais; Regulação de Saída de Sistemas Não-Lineares Racionais com Saturação de Entrada e Extensão para Regulação de Saída Prática. O primeiro capítulo mencionado introduz a proposta de base deste trabalho, que consiste no emprego da representação algébrico-diferencial para a dinâmica do erro de regulação entorno do conjunto invariante descrito pelas equações do regulador. Com base nesta formulação, teoremas de estabilidade e desempenho são obtidos com condições na forma de desigualdades matriciais, permitindo o uso de otimização numérica para análise e síntese de controladores estabilizantes. No próximo capítulo, a formulação é estendida para a presença de saturação no sinal de controle, onde uma nova condição de setor é proposta para tratar esta não-linearidade adicional. Desta forma, novos teoremas são obtidos tanto para análise quanto para síntese de controladores estabilizantes incluindo compensadores anti-windup. No capítulo final da metodologia, considera-se uma abordagem de regulação prática onde soluções numéricas aproximadas podem ser consideradas para as equações do regulador. Novos teoremas de estabilidade voltados para análise e síntese também são obtidos dentro deste panorama prático, onde garante-se um conjunto terminal para a trajetória do erro de saída. Em geral, a grande importância deste trabalho é a possibilidade de solucionar um novo conjunto de problemas de regulação de saída não-linear, anteriormente intratáveis por métodos do estado-da-arte