Design and Optimization of Controllers for an Electro-Hydraulic System

• Main Author: André, Simon
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Linköpings universitet, Reglerteknik 2014
• Subjects: Electro-Hydraulic; EH; Controllers; Control strategies; Proportional-Integral-Derivative; PID; Cascade; Feed forward; Linear Quadratic; LQ; Model Predictive Control; MPC
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-107620

Electro-Hydraulic (EH) systems are commonly used in the industry for applications that require high power-weight ratios and large driving forces. The EH system studied in this master thesis have recently been upgraded with new hardware components and as a part of this upgrade a new controller was requested. The system consists of a controller that computes a control signal for an electric motor. The motor drives a gear pump that generates a flow of hydraulic fluid. The flow is then directed to a cylinder. The movements of a piston in the cylinder is affected by the flow and the piston position can be measured. The measured piston position is then fed back to the controller and the control loop is complete. The system was previously controlled using a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller and the purpose of this thesis is to compare the old controller with alternative control strategies suitable for this application. The evaluation of the controllers is based on both software and hardware simulations and results in a recommendation for final implementation of the best suited controller. The control strategies chosen for investigation are: a retuned PID controller, a PID controller with feed forward from reference, a PID based cascade controller, a Linear Quadratic (LQ) controller, and a Model Predictive Controller (MPC). To synthesize the controllers an approximate model of the system is formed and implemented in the software environment Matlab Simulink. The model is tuned to fit recorded data and provides a decent estimation of the actual system. The proposed control strategies are then simulated and evaluated in Simulink with the model posing as the real system. These simulations resulted in the elimination of the cascade controller as a possible candidate since it proved unstable for large steps in the reference signal. The remaining four controllers were all selected for simulation on the real hardware system. Unfortunately the MPC was never successfully implemented on the hardware due to some unknown compatibility error and hence eliminated as a possible candidate. The three remaining control strategies, PID, PID with feed forward from reference and the LQ controller, were all successfully implemented and simulated on hardware. The results from the hardware simulations compared to simulations made with the old controller, as well as the results from the software simulations, were then evaluated. Depending on the purpose one of two control strategies is recommended for this application. The LQ controller achieved the best overall performance and is presented as the control strategy best suited for this application.