Pitch angle control with fault diagnosis and tolerance for wind turbine generation systems

To enhance the reliability of wind turbine generation systems that are generally located in the remote area and subjected to harsh environment, we design the pitch angle control for variable speed wind turbines with the function of fault diagnosis and fault tolerance. The main fault targeted in this research is the mechanical wear and possible break of the blade, pitch gear set or shaft, which cause shaft rotary friction change. The proposed method uses a disturbance observer to diagnose the fault. The estimated fault is used for component assessment and later maintenance. The fault-tolerant control is achieved using a full-order terminal sliding mode control combined with an adaptive neural network estimator. With the compensation of the adaptive estimator, the post-fault states can be driven onto the sliding surface and converge to a small area around the origin. The full-order terminal sliding mode control ensures the state convergence in finite time. The Lyapunov method is used to derive the control law, so that the closed-loop post-fault stability and the convergence of the adaptive estimator adaptation are both guaranteed. The computer simulations of the pitch angle control based on a 5-MW variable-speed variable-pitch angle wind turbine model are conducted with different types of fault simulated. A third-order nonlinear state space model with fault term is derived, and real physical parameters are applied in the simulations. The simulation results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed scheme and the potential of real-world applications. © IMechE 2021

Optimal pneumatic actuator positioning and dynamic stability using prescribed performance control with particle swarm optimization: A simulation study

This paper introduces an optimal control strategy for pneumatic servo systems (PSS) positioning using Finite-time Prescribed Performance Control (FT-PPC) with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). Pneumatic servo systems are widely used in industrial automation, as well as medical and cybernetics systems that involve robotics applications. Precision in pneumatic control is crucial not only for the sake of efficiency but also safety. The primary goal of the proposed control strategy is to optimize the convergence rate and finite time of the prescribed performance function in error transformation of the FT-PPC, as well as the Proportional, Integral and Derivative (PID) controller as the inner-loop controller for this system. The study utilizes a dynamic model of a pneumatic proportional valve with a double-acting cylinder (PPVDC) as the targeted plant and performs simulations with a multi-step input trajectory. This offline tuning method is essential for such nonlinear systems to be safely optimized, avoiding major damage to the real-time fine-tuned works on the controller. The results demonstrate that the proposed control strategy surpasses the performance of FT-PPC with a PID controller alone, significantly improving the system's performance, including suppressing overshoot and oscillation in the responses. Further validation through the actual system of PPVDC using the fine-tuned values of FT-PPC and PID with PSO is a future task and more challenging to come, as hardware constraints may vary with different environments such as temperatures

High performance disturbance observer based control system design for permanent magnet synchronous AC machine applications

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonAn electrical machine is one of the main workforces in different industries and serves them in various applications. Machine drive control design involves many technical issues for efficient and robust exploitation. Over several decades, Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) is getting preferred for industrial applications over its counterpart Squirrel Cage Induction Motor (SCIM) drive, because of their higher efficiency, power density, and higher torque to inertia ratio. In the prospective that PMSM drives are considered the drives of the future, there are still technical challenges and issues related to PMSM control. Many studies have been devoted to PMSM control in the past, but there are still some open research areas that bring worldwide researchers’ interests back to PMSM drive control. One of the approaches that may facilitate better performance, higher efficiency, and robust and reliable work of the control system is the disturbance observer-based control (DOBC) with linear and nonlinear output feedback control for PM synchronous machine applications. DOBC is adopted due to its ability to reject external and internal disturbances with improving tracking performance in the variable speed wind energy conversion system (WECS) to maximize power extraction. The high order disturbance observer (HODO) is utilized to estimate the aerodynamic torque-based wind speed without the use of a traditional anemometer, which reduces the overall cost and improves the reliability of the whole system. Also, this method has been designed to improve the angular shaft speed tracking of the PMSM system under load torque disturbance and speed variations. The model-based linear and nonlinear feedback control are used in the proposed control systems. The sliding mode control (SMC) with switching output feedback control law and integral SMC with linear feedback and state-dependent Riccati equation (SDRE) based approaches have been designed for the systems. The SDRE control accounts for the nonlinear multivariable structure of the WECS and is approximated with Taylor series expansion terms. The chattering inherited from SMC is eliminated by the continuous approximation technique. The sliding mode is guaranteed by eliminating the reaching mode in the proposed integral SMC. The model-free cascaded linear feedback control system based on the proportional-integral (PI) controllers use a back-calculation algorithm anti-windup scheme. The proposed speed controllers are synthesized with HODO to compensate for the external disturbance, model uncertainty, noise, and modelling errors. Moreover, servomechanism-based SDRE control, a near-optimal control system is designed to suppress the model uncertainty and noise without the use of disturbance observers. The proposed control systems for PMSM speed regulation have demonstrated a significant improvement in the angular shaft speed-tracking performance at the transients. Their performances have been tested under speed, load torque variations, and model uncertainty. For example, HODO-based SMC with switching output feedback control law (SOFCL) has demonstrated improvement by more than 78% than the PI-PI control system of the PMSM. The performance of the HODOs-based Integral SMC with SDRE nonlinear feedback is improved by 80.5% under external disturbance, model uncertainty, and noise than Integral SMC with linear feedback in the WECS. The HODO-based SDRE control with servomechanism has shown an 80.2% improvement of mean absolute percentage error under disturbances than Integral SMC with linear feedback in the WECS. The PMSM speed tracking performance of the proposed HODO-based discrete-time PI-PI control system with back-calculation algorithm anti-windup scheme is improved by 87.29% and 90.2% in the speed commands and load torque disturbance variations scenarios respectively. The simulations for testing the proposed control system of the PMSM system and WECS have been implemented in Matlab/Simulink environment. The PMSM speed control experimental results have been obtained with Lucas-Nuelle DSP-based rapid control prototyping kit.Center for International Program “Bolashak” of the Ministry of Education and Science Republic of Kazakhsta

Commande hybride d'un système à suspension active

Cette thèse traite la modélisation, d’un système de suspension active électrohydraulique, du développement des lois de commande et leur implantation en temps réel pour des fins de validation. Les stratégies de contrôle employées et développées utilisent des approches de commande linéaire, nonlinéaire, et de commande adaptative avec des structures simples ou hybrides. Dans le cadre de cette thèse, nous avons développé une méthode de commande nonlinéaire hybride pour contrôler la position et la force appliquées sur un banc de suspension active représentant la suspension active d’un véhicule. La structure hybride combine deux contrôleurs nonlinéaires en utilisant deux filtres passe bas. Cette structure consiste en une loi de commande nonlinéaire qui contient des fonctions et des gains variables. Les contrôleurs sont développés en utilisant le mode de glissement pour sa robustesse malgré le broutement (chattering) produit dans la loi de commande. Une chose importante à traiter en contrôle de mode de glissement est la réduction du broutement. La loi d’atteint exponentielle est une des techniques existant pour réduire le broutement dans la loi de commande nonlinéaire. La technique a été testée en simulation ainsi qu’en temps réel pour des fins de validation dans cette thèse. Pour améliorer la performance du contrôleur proposé dans le paragraphe précédent, nous avons ajouté un autre contrôleur de logique floue basé sur les surfaces de glissement pour les tests de validation. Dans le contrôleur de logique floue, les entrées sont les surfaces de glissement de la position et de la force qui sont calculés instantanément dans le système. Le contrôleur de logique floue varie les gains des filtres efficacement pour améliorer la performance de contrôleur proposé utilisé dans la structure hybride. La stabilité de structure hybride est renforcée par la stabilité de chaque contrôleur employé dans cette structure. La popularité de contrôleur PID nous a motivé à l’intégrer dans la structure hybride. Vu que le contrôleur PID est facile à intégrer dans les applications industrielles et dans les systèmes embarqués, un contrôleur hybride basé sur des contrôleurs PID est construit et testé pour déterminer une force désirée en gardant la position dans ses limites. La structure hybride composée des contrôleurs PID et contrôleurs de mode de glissement a prouvé sa validité à travers des séries de tests en simulation et en temps réel. Les résultats montrent qu’un contrôleur hybride peut réduire la perturbation exercée sur un système à suspension active et suivre une trajectoire de force désirée générée à partir des paramètres du système. Ce double aspect ne peut être réalisé par un contrôleur simple et même un contrôleur nonlinéaire. Les contrôleurs simples sont faits pour réaliser un seul objectif (force ou position) et parfois garder des variables dans leurs limites. En revanche, la structure hybride est devenue de plus en plus populaire pour les applications multitâches surtout en robotiques. Autrement dit, le contrôle composé de deux contrôleurs a prouvé son efficacité dans plusieurs domaines. Dans le même sens, un contrôleur PID dual loop (PIDDL) a été développé et présenté sous une forme adaptative à travers des fonctions adaptatives pour contrôler la position de banc d’essai à suspension active. Le PIDDL pourrait être intégré dans la structure hybride pour avoir une nouvelle structure basée sur un contrôleur considéré comme une extension de contrôleur PID. Des contrôleurs à logique flou sont employés sous une structure adaptative avec des retours des sorties des même contrôleurs pour mettre à jour les gains essentiels de contrôleurs PID et PIDDL. Le contrôleur PIDDL avec des gains variables a été testé et validé à travers une série des comparaisons avec le PID et d’autres contrôleurs. Les résultats obtenus ont prouvé la validité du contrôleur proposé en surpassant les autres contrôleurs en termes de performance

Precision Control of a Sensorless Brushless Direct Current Motor System

Sensorless control strategies were first suggested well over a decade ago with the aim of reducing the size, weight and unit cost of electrically actuated servo systems. The resulting algorithms have been successfully applied to the induction and synchronous motor families in applications where control of armature speeds above approximately one hundred revolutions per minute is desired. However, sensorless position control remains problematic. This thesis provides an in depth investigation into sensorless motor control strategies for high precision motion control applications. Specifically, methods of achieving control of position and very low speed thresholds are investigated. The developed grey box identification techniques are shown to perform better than their traditional white or black box counterparts. Further, fuzzy model based sliding mode control is implemented and results demonstrate its improved robustness to certain classes of disturbance. Attempts to reject uncertainty within the developed models using the sliding mode are discussed. Novel controllers, which enhance the performance of the sliding mode are presented. Finally, algorithms that achieve control without a primary feedback sensor are successfully demonstrated. Sensorless position control is achieved with resolutions equivalent to those of existing stepper motor technology. The successful control of armature speeds below sixty revolutions per minute is achieved and problems typically associated with motor starting are circumvented.Research Instruments Ltd

Sliding Mode Control

The main objective of this monograph is to present a broad range of well worked out, recent application studies as well as theoretical contributions in the field of sliding mode control system analysis and design. The contributions presented here include new theoretical developments as well as successful applications of variable structure controllers primarily in the field of power electronics, electric drives and motion steering systems. They enrich the current state of the art, and motivate and encourage new ideas and solutions in the sliding mode control area

Computer numerical control grinding of spiral bevel gears

The development of Computer Numerical Control (CNC) spiral bevel gear grinding has paved the way for major improvement in the production of precision spiral bevel gears. The object of the program was to decrease the setup, maintenance of setup, and pattern development time by 50 percent of the time required on conventional spiral bevel gear grinders. Details of the process are explained

Adaptive Sliding Mode Control for Robotic Surface Treatment Using Force Feedback

[EN] This work presents a hybrid position-force control of robots in order to apply surface treatments such as polishing, grinding, finishing, deburring, etc. The robot force control is designed using sliding mode concepts to benefit from robustness. In particular, the sliding mode force task is defined using equality constraints to attain the desired tool pressure on the surface, as well as to keep the tool orientation perpendicular to the surface. In order to deal with sudden changes in material stiffness, which are ultimately transferred to the polishing tool and can produce instability and compromise polishing performance, several adaptive switching gain laws are considered and compared. Moreover, a lower priority tracking controller is defined to follow the desired reference trajectory on the surface being polished. Hence, deviations from the reference trajectory are allowed if such deviations are required to satisfy the constraints mentioned above. Finally, a third-level task is also considered for the case of redundant robots in order to use the remaining degrees of freedom to keep the manipulator close to the home configuration with safety in mind. The main advantages of the method are increased robustness and low computational cost. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approach are substantiated by experimental results using a redundant 7R manipulator: the Rethink Robotics Sawyer collaborative robot.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Government under the project DPI2017-87656-C2-1-R and the Generalitat Valenciana under Grants VALi + d APOSTD/2016/044 and BEST/2017/029.Gracia Calandin, LI.; Solanes Galbis, JE.; Muñoz-Benavent, P.; Valls Miro, J.; Perez-Vidal, C.; Tornero Montserrat, J. (2018). Adaptive Sliding Mode Control for Robotic Surface Treatment Using Force Feedback. Mechatronics. 52:102-118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2018.04.008S1021185

A review of dynamic models and stability analysis for a hydro-turbine governing system

Industrial Ecolog