Design of integrated pitch axis for autopilot/autothrottle and integrated lateral axis for autopilot/yaw damper for NASA TSRV airplane using integral LQG methodology

Two designs are presented for control systems for the NASA Transport System Research Vehicle (TSRV) using integral Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) methodology. The first is an integrated longitudinal autopilot/autothrottle design and the second design is an integrated lateral autopilot/yaw damper/sideslip controller design. It is shown that a systematic top-down approach to a complex design problem combined with proper application of modern control synthesis techniques yields a satisfactory solution in a reasonable period of time

Flexible and robust control of heavy duty diesel engine airpath using data driven disturbance observers and GPR models

Diesel engine airpath control is crucial for modern engine development due to increasingly stringent emission regulations. This thesis aims to develop and validate a exible and robust control approach to this problem for speci cally heavy-duty engines. It focuses on estimation and control algorithms that are implementable to the current and next generation commercial electronic control units (ECU). To this end, targeting the control units in service, a data driven disturbance observer (DOB) is developed and applied for mass air ow (MAF) and manifold absolute pressure (MAP) tracking control via exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) valve and variable geometry turbine (VGT) vane. Its performance bene ts are demonstrated on the physical engine model for concept evaluation. The proposed DOB integrated with a discrete-time sliding mode controller is applied to the serial level engine control unit. Real engine performance is validated with the legal emission test cycle (WHTC - World Harmonized Transient Cycle) for heavy-duty engines and comparison with a commercially available controller is performed, and far better tracking results are obtained. Further studies are conducted in order to utilize capabilities of the next generation control units. Gaussian process regression (GPR) models are popular in automotive industry especially for emissions modeling but have not found widespread applications in airpath control yet. This thesis presents a GPR modeling of diesel engine airpath components as well as controller designs and their applications based on the developed models. Proposed GPR based feedforward and feedback controllers are validated with available physical engine models and the results have been very promisin

Discrete Modeling and Sliding Mode Control of Piezoelectric Actuators

With the ability to generate fine displacements with a resolution down to sub-nanometers, piezoelectric actuators (PEAs) have found wide applications in various nano-positioning systems. However, existence of various effects in PEAs, such as hysteresis and creep, as well as dynamics can seriously degrade the PEA performance or even lead to instability. This raises a great need to model and control PEAs for improved performance, which have drawn remarkable attention in the literature. Sliding mode control (SMC) shows its potential to the control of PEA, by which the hysteresis and other nonlinear effects can be regard as disturbance to the dynamic model and thus rejected or compensated by its switching control. To implement SMC in digital computers, this research is aimed at developing novel discrete models and discrete SMC (DSMC)-based control schemes for PEAs, along with their experimental validation. The first part of this thesis concerns with the modeling and control of one-degree of freedom (DOF) PEA, which can be treated as a single-input-single-output (SISO) system. Specifically, a novel discrete model based on the concept of auto-regressive moving average (ARMA) was developed for the PEA hysteresis; and to compensate for the PEA hysteresis and improve its dynamics, an output tracking integrated discrete proportional-integral-derivative-based SMC (PID-SMC) was developed. On this basis, by making use of the availability of PEA hysteresis models, two control schemes, named “the discrete inversion feedforward based PID-SMC” and “the discrete disturbance observer (DOB)-based PID-SMC”, were further developed. To illustrate the effectiveness of the developed models and control schemes, experiments were designed and conducted on a commercially available one-DOF PEA, as compared with the existing ones. The second part of the thesis presents the extension of the developed modeling and control methods to multi-DOF PEAs. Given the fact that details with regard to the PEA internal configurations is not typically provided by the manufacturer, a state space model based on the black box system identification was developed for the three-DOF PEA. The developed model was then integrated in the output tracking based discrete PID-SMC, with its effectiveness verified through the experiments on a commercially available three-DOF PEA. The superiority of the proposed control method over the conventional PID controller was also experimentally investigated and demonstrated. Finally, by integrating with a DOB in the discrete PID-based SMC, a novel control scheme is resulted to compensate for the nonlinearities of the three-DOF PEA. To verify its effectiveness, the discrete DOB based PID-SMC was applied in the control experiments and compared with the existing SMC. The significance of this research lies in the development of the discrete models and PID-based SMC for PEAs, which is of great help to improve their performance. The successful application of the proposed method in the control of multi-DOF PEA allows the application of SMC to the control of complicated multi-inputs-multi-outputs (MIMO) systems without details regarding the internal configuration. Also, integration of the inversion based feedforward control and the DOB in the SMC design has been proven effective for the tracking control of PEAs

Modeling and Control of Piezoelectric Actuators

Piezoelectric actuators (PEAs) utilize the inverse piezoelectric effect to generate fine displacement with a resolution down to sub-nanometers and as such, they have been widely used in various micro- and nanopositioning applications. However, the modeling and control of PEAs have proven to be challenging tasks. The main difficulties lie in the existence of various nonlinear or difficult-to-model effects in PEAs, such as hysteresis, creep, and distributive vibration dynamics. Such effects can seriously degrade the PEA tracking control performances or even lead to instability. This raises a great need to model and control PEAs for improved performance. This research is aimed at developing novel models for PEAs and on this basis, developing model-based control schemes for the PEA tracking control taking into account the aforementioned nonlinear effects. In the first part of this research, a model of a PEA for the effects of hysteresis, creep, and vibration dynamics was developed. Notably, the widely-used Preisach hysteresis model cannot represent the one-sided hysteresis of PEAs. To overcome this shortcoming, a rate-independent hysteresis model based on a novel hysteresis operator modified from the Preisach hysteresis operator was developed, which was then integrated with the models of creep and vibration dynamics to form a comprehensive model for PEAs. For its validation, experiments were carried out on a commercially-available PEA and the results obtained agreed with those from model simulations. By taking into account the linear dynamics and hysteretic behavior of the PEA as well as the presliding friction between the moveable platform and the end-effector, a model of the piezoelectric-driven stick-slip (PDSS) actuator was also developed in the first part of the research. The effectiveness of the developed model was illustrated by the experiments on the PDSS actuator prototyped in the author's lab. In the second part of the research, control schemes were developed based on the aforementioned PEA models for tracking control of PEAs. Firstly, a novel PID-based sliding mode (PIDSM) controller was developed. The rational behind the use of a sliding mode (SM) control is that the SM control can effectively suppress the effects of matched uncertainties, while the PEA hysteresis, creep, and external load can be represented by a lumped matched uncertainty based on the developed model. To solve the chattering and steady-state problems, associated with the ideal SM control and the SM control with boundary layer (SMCBL), the novel PIDSM control developed in the present study replaces the switching control term in the ideal SM control schemes with a PID regulator. Experiments were carried out on a commercially-available PEA and the results obtained illustrate the effectiveness of the PIDSM controller, and its superiorities over other schemes of PID control, ideal SM control, and the SMCBL in terms of steady state error elimination, chattering suppression, and tracking error suppression. Secondly, a PIDSM observer was also developed based on the model of PEAs to provide the PIDSM controller with state estimates of the PEA. And the PIDSM controller and the PIDSM observer were combined to form an integrated control scheme (PIDSM observer-controller or PIDSMOC) for PEAs. The effectiveness of the PIDSM observer and the PIDSMOC were also validated experimentally. The superiority of the PIDSMOC over the PIDSM controller with σ-β filter control scheme was also analyzed and demonstrated experimentally. The significance of this research lies in the development of novel models for PEAs and PDSS actuators, which can be of great help in the design and control of such actuators. Also, the development of the PIDSM controller, the PIDSM observer, and their integrated form, i.e., PIDSMOC, enables the improved performance of tracking control of PEAs with the presence of various nonlinear or difficult-to-model effects

Contributions to cascade linear control strategies applied to grid-connected Voltage-Source Converters

El trabajo desarrollado en esta Tesis se centra en optimizar el comportamiento de Voltage-Source Converters (VSCs) cuando son utilizados como interfaz con la red eléctrica, tanto para absorber como para entregar energía de la red con la mejor calidad posible y cumpliendo con los estándares. Para tal fin, esta Tesis se centra en el control de sistemas lineales conectados en cascada aplicados al control de VSCs conectados en paralelo con la red eléctrica a través de un filtro L, especialmente en conexiones con redes débiles y en dos líneas de trabajo: (i) seguimiento de armónicos de las corrientes de red y rechazo de armónicos de las tensiones de red, y (ii) control de la tensión del PCC en caso de desequilibrio. Para ello, esta Tesis realiza contribuciones en el área del control de corriente y control de la tensión del PCC. De entre las técnicas existentes para implementar el control de corriente para compensación armónica, dos de las más utilizadas son el control resonante y el control repetitivo, tanto en ejes de referencia estacionarios como síncronos. Se ha realizado un exhaustivo estudio de diferentes estructuras para implementar tales controles, mostrando su algoritmo adaptativo en frecuencia para cada una de ellas y analizando su carga computacional. Además, se han facilitado directrices básicas para su programación en un DSP. Se ha analizado también el esquema de control de corriente para establecer una comparación entre las diferentes estructuras. Después de estudiar en profundidad el control de corriente de un VSC conectado a la red eléctrica, el segundo control a analizar es el control de tensión del PCC. La presencia de una tensión desequilibrada en el PCC da lugar a la aparición de una componente de corriente de secuencia negativa, que deteriora el comportamiento del sistema de control cuando se emplean las técnicas de control convencionales. Los STATCOMs son bien conocidos por ser una aplicación de potencia capaz de llevar a cabo la regulación de la tensión en el PCC en líneas de distribución que pueden ser susceptibles de sufrir perturbaciones. Esta Tesis propone el uso de un controlador de tensión en ejes de referencia síncronos para compensar una tensión desequilibrada a través de un STATCOM, permitiendo controlar independientemente tanto la secuencia positiva como la secuencia negativa. Además, este controlador incluye aspectos como un mecanismo de antiwindup y droop control para mejorar su comportamiento. Se han realizado varias pruebas experimentales para analizar las características de los controladores de corriente abordados en esta Tesis. Todas ellas han sido realizadas bajo las mismas condiciones de potencia, tensión y corriente, de modo que se pueden extraer resultados comparativos. Estas pruebas pretenden caracterizar la respuesta transitoria, la respuesta en régimen permanente, el comportamiento frente a saltos de frecuencia y la carga computacional de los controladores de corriente estudiados

Parameter identification and model based control of direct drive robots

Imperial Users onl

Practical Solutions to the Non-Minimum Phase and Vibration Problems Under the Disturbance Rejection Paradigm

This dissertation tackles two kinds of control problems under the disturbance rejection paradigm (DRP): 1) the general problem of non-minimum phase (NMP) systems, such as systems with right half plane (RHP) zeros and those with time delay 2) the specific problem of vibration, a prevailing problem facing practicing engineers in the real world of industrial control. It is shown that the DRP brings to the table a refreshingly novel way of thinking in tackling the persistently challenging problems in control. In particular, the problem of NMP has confounded researchers for decades in trying to find a satisfactory solution that is both rigorous and practical. The active disturbance rejection control (ADRC), originated from DRP, provides a potential solution. Even more intriguingly, the DRP provides a new framework to tackle the ubiquitous problem of vibration, whether it is found in the resonant modes in industrial motion control with compliant load, which is almost always the case, or in the microphonics of superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities in high energy particle accelerators. That is, whether the vibration is caused by the environment or by the characteristics of process dynamics, DRP provides a single framework under which the problem is better understood and resolved. New solutions are tested and validated in both simulations and experiments, demonstrating the superiority of the new design over the previous ones. For systems with time delay, the stability characteristic of the proposed solution is analyze