Neurofuzzy controller based full vehicle nonlinear active suspension systems

To design a robust controller for active suspension systems is very important for guaranteeing the riding comfort for passengers and road handling quality for a vehicle. In this thesis, the mathematical model of full vehicle nonlinear active suspension systems with hydraulic actuators is derived to take into account all the motions of the vehicle and the nonlinearity behaviours of the active suspension system and hydraulic actuators. Four robust control types are designed and the comparisons among the robustness of those controllers against different disturbance types are investigated to select the best controller among them. The MATLAB SIMULINK toolboxes are used to simulate the proposed controllers with the controlled model and to display the responses of the controlled model under different types of disturbance. The results show that the neurofuzzy controller is more effective and robust than the other controller types. The implementation of the neurofuzzy controller using FPGA boards has been investigated in this work. The Xilinx ISE program is employed to synthesis the VHDL codes that describe the operation of the neurofuzzy controller and to generate the configuration file used to program the FPGA. The ModelSim program is used to simulate the operation of the VHDL codes and to obtain the expected output data of the FPGA boards. To confirm that FPGA the board used as the neurofuzzy controller system operated as expected, a MATLAB script file is used to compare the set of data obtained from the ModelSim program and the set of data obtained from the MATLAB SIMULINK model. The results show that the FPGA board is effective to be used as a neurofuzzy controller for full vehicle nonlinear active suspension systems. The active suspension system has a great performance for vibration isolation. However the main drawback of the active suspension is that it is high energy consumptive. Therefore, to use this suspension system in the proposed model, this drawback should be solved. Electromagnetic actuators are used to convert the vibration energy that arises from the rough road to useful electrical energy to reduce the energy consumption by the active suspension systems. The results show that the electromagnetic devices act as a power generator, i.e. the vibration energy excited by the rough road surface has been converted to a useful electrical energy supply for the actuators. Furthermore, when the nonlinear damper models are replaced by the electromagnetic actuators, riding comfort and the road handling quality are improved. As a result, two targets have been achieved by using hydraulic actuators with electromagnetic suspension systems: increasing fuel economy and improving the vehicle performance

Automation and Control Architecture for Hybrid Pipeline Robots

The aim of this research project, towards the automation of the Hybrid Pipeline Robot (HPR), is the development of a control architecture and strategy, based on reconfiguration of the control strategy for speed-controlled pipeline operations and self-recovering action, while performing energy and time management. The HPR is a turbine powered pipeline device where the flow energy is converted to mechanical energy for traction of the crawler vehicle. Thus, the device is flow dependent, compromising the autonomy, and the range of tasks it can perform. The control strategy proposes pipeline operations supervised by a speed control, while optimizing the energy, solved as a multi-objective optimization problem. The states of robot cruising and self recovering, are controlled by solving a neuro-dynamic programming algorithm for energy and time optimization, The robust operation of the robot includes a self-recovering state either after completion of the mission, or as a result of failures leading to the loss of the robot inside the pipeline, and to guaranteeing the HPR autonomy and operations even under adverse pipeline conditions Two of the proposed models, system identification and tracking system, based on Artificial Neural Networks, have been simulated with trial data. Despite the satisfactory results, it is necessary to measure a full set of robot’s parameters for simulating the complete control strategy. To solve the problem, an instrumentation system, consisting on a set of probes and a signal conditioning board, was designed and developed, customized for the HPR’s mechanical and environmental constraints. As a result, the contribution of this research project to the Hybrid Pipeline Robot is to add the capabilities of energy management, for improving the vehicle autonomy, increasing the distances the device can travel inside the pipelines; the speed control for broadening the range of operations; and the self-recovery capability for improving the reliability of the device in pipeline operations, lowering the risk of potential loss of the robot inside the pipeline, causing the degradation of pipeline performance. All that means the pipeline robot can target new market sectors that before were prohibitive

12th International Conference on Vibrations in Rotating Machinery

Since 1976, the Vibrations in Rotating Machinery conferences have successfully brought industry and academia together to advance state-of-the-art research in dynamics of rotating machinery. 12th International Conference on Vibrations in Rotating Machinery contains contributions presented at the 12th edition of the conference, from industrial and academic experts from different countries. The book discusses the challenges in rotor-dynamics, rub, whirl, instability and more. The topics addressed include: - Active, smart vibration control - Rotor balancing, dynamics, and smart rotors - Bearings and seals - Noise vibration and harshness - Active and passive damping - Applications: wind turbines, steam turbines, gas turbines, compressors - Joints and couplings - Challenging performance boundaries of rotating machines - High power density machines - Electrical machines for aerospace - Management of extreme events - Active machines - Electric supercharging - Blades and bladed assemblies (forced response, flutter, mistuning) - Fault detection and condition monitoring - Rub, whirl and instability - Torsional vibration Providing the latest research and useful guidance, 12th International Conference on Vibrations in Rotating Machinery aims at those from industry or academia that are involved in transport, power, process, medical engineering, manufacturing or construction

Optimal control and robust estimation for ocean wave energy converters

This thesis deals with the optimal control of wave energy converters and some associated observer design problems. The first part of the thesis will investigate model predictive control of an ocean wave energy converter to maximize extracted power. A generic heaving converter that can have both linear dampers and active elements as a power take-off system is considered and an efficient optimal control algorithm is developed for use within a receding horizon control framework. The optimal control is also characterized analytically. A direct transcription of the optimal control problem is also considered as a general nonlinear program. A variation of the projected gradient optimization scheme is formulated and shown to be feasible and computationally inexpensive compared to a standard nonlinear program solver. Since the system model is bilinear and the cost function is not convex quadratic, the resulting optimization problem is shown not to be a quadratic program. Results are compared with other methods like optimal latching to demonstrate the improvement in absorbed power under irregular sea condition simulations. In the second part, robust estimation of the radiation forces and states inherent in the optimal control of wave energy converters is considered. Motivated by this, low order H∞ observer design for bilinear systems with input constraints is investigated and numerically tractable methods for design are developed. A bilinear Luenberger type observer is formulated and the resulting synthesis problem reformulated as that for a linear parameter varying system. A bilinear matrix inequality problem is then solved to find nominal and robust quadratically stable observers. The performance of these observers is compared with that of an extended Kalman filter. The robustness of the observers to parameter uncertainty and to variation in the radiation subsystem model order is also investigated. This thesis also explores the numerical integration of bilinear control systems with zero-order hold on the control inputs. Making use of exponential integrators, exact to high accuracy integration is proposed for such systems. New a priori bounds are derived on the computational complexity of integrating bilinear systems with a given error tolerance. Employing our new bounds on computational complexity, we propose a direct exponential integrator to solve bilinear ODEs via the solution of sparse linear systems of equations. Based on this, a novel sparse direct collocation of bilinear systems for optimal control is proposed. These integration schemes are also used within the indirect optimal control method discussed in the first part.Open Acces

12th International Conference on Vibrations in Rotating Machinery

Since 1976, the Vibrations in Rotating Machinery conferences have successfully brought industry and academia together to advance state-of-the-art research in dynamics of rotating machinery. 12th International Conference on Vibrations in Rotating Machinery contains contributions presented at the 12th edition of the conference, from industrial and academic experts from different countries. The book discusses the challenges in rotor-dynamics, rub, whirl, instability and more. The topics addressed include: - Active, smart vibration control - Rotor balancing, dynamics, and smart rotors - Bearings and seals - Noise vibration and harshness - Active and passive damping - Applications: wind turbines, steam turbines, gas turbines, compressors - Joints and couplings - Challenging performance boundaries of rotating machines - High power density machines - Electrical machines for aerospace - Management of extreme events - Active machines - Electric supercharging - Blades and bladed assemblies (forced response, flutter, mistuning) - Fault detection and condition monitoring - Rub, whirl and instability - Torsional vibration Providing the latest research and useful guidance, 12th International Conference on Vibrations in Rotating Machinery aims at those from industry or academia that are involved in transport, power, process, medical engineering, manufacturing or construction

Systems Structure and Control

The title of the book System, Structure and Control encompasses broad field of theory and applications of many different control approaches applied on different classes of dynamic systems. Output and state feedback control include among others robust control, optimal control or intelligent control methods such as fuzzy or neural network approach, dynamic systems are e.g. linear or nonlinear with or without time delay, fixed or uncertain, onedimensional or multidimensional. The applications cover all branches of human activities including any kind of industry, economics, biology, social sciences etc

Nonlinear hydrodynamic modelling of wave energy converters under controlled conditions

One of the major challenges facing modern industrialized countries is the provision of energy: traditional sources, mainly based on fossil fuels, are not only growing scarcer and more expensive, but are also irremediably damaging the environment. Renewable and sustainable energy sources are attractive alternatives that can substantially diversify the energy mix, cut down pollution, and reduce the human footprint on the environment. Ocean energy, including energy generated from the motion of wave, is a tremendous untapped energy resource that could make a decisive contribution to the future supply of clean energy. However, numerous obstacles must be overcome for ocean energy to reach economic viability and compete with other energy sources. Energy can be generated from ocean waves by wave energy converters (WECs). The amount of energy extracted from ocean waves, and therefore the profitability of the extraction, can be increased by optimizing the geometry and the control strategy of the wave energy converter, both of which require mathematical hydrodynamic models that are able to correctly describe the WEC- uid interaction. On the one hand, the accuracy and representativeness of such models have a major in uence on the effectiveness of the WEC design. On the other hand, the computational time required by a model limits its applicability, since many iterations or real-time calculations may be required. Critically, computational time and accuracy are often mutually contrasting features of a mathematical model, so an appropriate compromise should be defined in accordance with the purpose of the model, the device type, and the operational conditions. Linear models, often chosen due to their computational convenience, are likely to be imprecise when a control strategy is implemented in a WEC: under controlled conditions, the motion of the device is exaggerated in order to maximize power absorption, which invalidates the assumption of linearity. The inclusion of nonlinearities in a model is likely to improve the model's accuracy, but increases the computational burden. Therefore, the objective is to define a parsimonious model, in which only relevant nonlinearities are modelled in order to obtain an appropriate compromise between accuracy and computational time. In addition to presenting a wider discussion of nonlinear hydrodynamic modelling for WECs, this thesis contributes the development of a computationally efficient nonlinear hydrodynamic model for axisymmetric WEC devices, from one to six degrees of freedom, based on a novel approach to the nonlinear computation of static and dynamic Froude-Krylov forces