Linear Parameter-Varying Control of a Floating Piston Electro-Pneumatic Actuator

Abstract

This paper deals with the control design of an electro-pneumatic gearbox actuator. The controller must be able to handle the highly nonlinear and unstable behavior of the system, while it also has to meet strict, partly contradictory requirements. The state-space representation of the actuator can be formulated as a quasi-Linear Parameter Varying system, thus a grid-based LPV/ℋ2 controller has been developed, which has been tested in a Model in the Loop environment. Based on the testing results, the controller proved to be a good trade-off between the requirements. Meanwhile, it has better overall performance than the widely used LTI control methods.