An Alternative Nonlinear Lyapunov Redesign Velocity Controller for an Electrohydraulic Drive

Abstract

This research aims at developing control law strategies that improve the performances and the robustness of electrohydraulic servosystems (EHSS) operation while considering easy implementation. To address the strongly nonlinear nature of the EHSS, a number of control algorithms based on backstepping approach is intensively used in the literature. The main contribution of this paper is to consider an alternative approach to synthetize a Lyapunov redesign nonlinear EHSS velocity controller. The proposed control law design is based on an appropriate choice of the control lyapunov function (clf), the extension of the Sontag formula and the construction of a nonlinear observer. The clf includes all the three system variable states in a positive define function. The Sontag formula is used in the time derivative of our clf in order to ensure an asymptotic stabilizing controller for regulating and tracking objectives. A nonlinear observer is developed in order to bring to the proposed controller the estimated values of the first and the second time output derivatives. The design, the tuning implementation and the performances of the proposed controller are compared to those of its equivalent backstepping controller. It is shown that the proposed controller is easier to design with simple implementation tuning while the backstepping controller has several complex design steps and implementation tuning issue. Moreover, the best performances especially under disturbance in the viscous damping are achieved with the proposed controller.