Precision Motion Control of Hydraulic Actuator Using Adaptive Back-Stepping Sliding Mode Controller

Hydraulic actuators are highly nonlinear when they are subjected to different types of model uncertainties and dynamic disturbances.These unfavorable factors adversely affect the control performance of the hydraulic actuator.Although various control methods have been employed to improve the tracking precision of the dynamic system,optimizing and adjusting control gain to mitigate the hydraulic actuator model uncertainties remains elusive.This study presents an adaptive back-stepping sliding mode controller(ABSMC)to enhance the trajectory tracking precision,where the virtual control law is constructed to replace the position error.The adaptive control theory is introduced in back-stepping controller design to compensate for the model uncertainties and time-varying disturbances.Based on Lyapunov theory,the finite-time convergence of the position tracking errors is proved.Furthermore,the effectiveness of the developed control scheme is conducted via extensive comparative experiments.

Physical and numerical investigations of target stratum selection for ground hydraulic fracturing of multiple hard roofs

Ground hydraulic fracturing plays a crucial role in controlling the far-field hard roof,making it imperative to identify the most suitable target stratum for effective control.Physical experiments are conducted based on engineering properties to simulate the gradual collapse of the roof during longwall top coal caving(LTCC).A numerical model is established using the material point method(MPM)and the strain-softening damage constitutive model according to the structure of the physical model.Numerical simulations are conducted to analyze the LTCC process under different hard roofs for ground hydraulic fracturing.The results show that ground hydraulic fracturing releases the energy and stress of the target stratum,resulting in a substantial lag in the fracturing of the overburden before collapse occurs in the hydraulic fracturing stratum.Ground hydraulic fracturing of a low hard roof reduces the lag effect of hydraulic fractures,dissipates the energy consumed by the fracture of the hard roof,and reduces the abutment stress.Therefore,it is advisable to prioritize the selection of the lower hard roof as the target stratum.

Backstepping Sliding Mode Control Based on Extended State Observer for Hydraulic Servo System

Hydraulic servo system plays an important role in industrial fields due to the advantages of high response,small size-to-power ratio and large driving force.However,inherent nonlinear behaviors and modeling uncertainties are the main obstacles for hydraulic servo system to achieve high tracking perfor-mance.To deal with these difficulties,this paper presents a backstepping sliding mode controller to improve the dynamic tracking performance and anti-interfer-ence ability.For this purpose,the nonlinear dynamic model is firstly established,where the nonlinear behaviors and modeling uncertainties are lumped as one term.Then,the extended state observer is introduced to estimate the lumped distur-bance.The system stability is proved by using the Lyapunov stability theorem.Finally,comparative simulation and experimental are conducted on a hydraulic servo system platform to verify the efficiency of the proposed control scheme.

ON THE HYDRAULIC FAILURE PROBABILITY OF FLOOD CONTROL DAMS

In flood control dams it is not only the failure to prevent flood larger than their design carrying capacity, but also the uncertainties of hydraulic factors that cause disasters. In general, the hydraulic risk is not considered in most of the hydrological analysis in floodproofing plan and design. In this paper, a method of evaluating the hydraulic risk is developed by employing risk theory, and the concept can easily be extended to other types of risk analysis. As a result, it is possible not to consider the hydraulic resks when the design hydrologic risk of flood control dam is lger. Otherwise, the hydraulic risks must be noticed. The research is very helpful for the development of the flood control theory used at present.

Research and Development of Electro‑hydraulic Control Valves Oriented to Industry 4.0:A Review

Electro-hydraulic control valves are key hydraulic components for industrial applications and aerospace,which controls electro-hydraulic motion.With the development of automation,digital technology,and communication technology,electro-hydraulic control valves are becoming more digital,integrated,and intelligent in order to meet the requirements of Industry 4.0.This paper reviews the state of the art development for electro-hydraulic control valves and their related technologies.This review paper considers three aspects of state acquisition through sensors or indirect acquisition technologies,control strategies along with digital controllers and novel valves,and online maintenance through data interaction and fault diagnosis.The main features and development trends of electro-hydraulic control valves oriented to Industry 4.0 are discussed.

Dynamic simulation and optimal control strategy for a parallel hybrid hydraulic excavator

The primary focus of this study is to investigate the control strategies of a hybrid system used in hydraulic excavators. First, the structure and evaluation target of hybrid hydraulic excavators are analyzed. Then the dynamic system model including batteries, motor and engine is built as the simulation environment to obtain control results. A so-called multi-work-point dynamic control strategy, which has both closed-loop speed PI (proportion integral) control and direct torque control, is proposed and studied in the simulation model. Simulation results indicate that the hybrid system with this strategy can meet the power demand and achieve better system stability and higher fuel efficiency.

Fuzzy iterative learning control of electro-hydraulic servo system for SRM direct-drive volume control hydraulic press

A new kind of volume control hydraulic press that combines the advantages of both hydraulic and SRM(switched reluctance motor) driving technology is developed.Considering that the serious dead zone and time-variant nonlinearity exist in the volume control electro-hydraulic servo system,the ILC(iterative learning control) method is applied to tracking the displacement curve of the hydraulic press slider.In order to improve the convergence speed and precision of ILC,a fuzzy ILC algorithm that utilizes the fuzzy strategy to adaptively adjust the iterative learning gains is put forward.The simulation and experimental researches are carried out to investigate the convergence speed and precision of the fuzzy ILC for hydraulic press slider position tracking.The results show that the fuzzy ILC can raise the iterative learning speed enormously,and realize the tracking control of slider displacement curve with rapid response speed and high control precision.In experiment,the maximum tracking error 0.02 V is achieved through 12 iterations only.

Water-Assisted Injection Molding System Based on Water Hydraulic Proportional Control Technique

Water-assisted injection molding（WAIM）, an innovative process to mold plastic parts with hollow sections, is characterized with intermittent, periodic process and large pressure and flow rate variation. Energy savings and injection pressure control can not be .attained based on conventional valve control system. Moreover, the injection water can not be supplied directly by water hydraulic proportional control system. Poor efficiency and control performance are presented by current trial systems, which pressurize injection water by compressed air. In this paper, a novel water hydraulic system is developed applying an accumulator for energy saving. And a new differential pressure control method is proposed by using pressure cylinder and water hydraulic proportional pressure relief valve for back pressure control. Aiming at design of linear controller for injection water pressure regulation, a linear load model is approximately built through computational fluid dynamics（CFD） simulation on two-phase flow cavity filling process with variable temperature and viscosity, and a linear model of pressure control system is built with the load model and linearization of water hydraulic components. According to the simulation, model based feedback is brought forward to compensate the pressure decrease during accumulator discharge and eliminate the derivative element of the system. Meanwhile, the steady-state error can be reduced and the capacity of resisting disturbance can be enhanced, by closed-loop control of load pressure with integral compensation. Through the developed experimental system in the State Key Lab of Fluid Power Transmission and Control, Zhejiang University, China, the static characteristic of the water hydraulic proportional relief valve was tested and output pressure control of the system in Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene（ABS） parts molding experiments was also studied. The experiment results show that the dead band and hysteresis of the water hydraulic proportional pressure relief valve are large, but the control precision and linearity can be improved with feed-forward compensation. With the experimental results of injection water pressure control, the applicability of this WAIM system and the effect of its linear controller are verified. The novel proposed process of WAIM pressure control and study on characteristics of control system contribute to the application of water hydraulic proportional control and WAIM technology.

High Speed On/Off Valve Control Hydraulic Propeller

The work-class remotely-operated-underwater-vehicles（ROVs） are mainly driven by hydraulic propulsion system,and the effeciency of hydraulic propulsion system is an important performance index of ROVs.However,the efficiency of traditional hydraulic propulsion system controlled by throttle valves is too low.Therefore,in this paper,for small and medium ROVs,a novel propulsion system with higher efficiency based on high speed on/off valve control hydraulic propeller is proposed.To solve the conflict between large flow rate and high frequency response performance,a two-stage high speed on/off valve-motor unit with large flow rate and high response speed simultaneously is developed.Through theoretical analysis,an effective fluctuation control method and a novel pulse-width-pulse-frequency-modulation（PWPFM） are introduced to solve the conflict among inherently fluctuation,valve dynamic performance and system efficiency.A simulation model is established to evaluate the system performance.To prove the advantage of system in energy saving,and test the dynamic control performance of high speed on/off valve control propeller,a test setup is developed and a series of comparative experiments is completed.The smimulation and experiment results show that the two-stage high speed on/off valve has an excellent dynamic response performance,and can be used to realize high accuracy speed control.The experiment results prove that the new propulsion system has much more advantages than the traditional throttle speed regulation system in energy saving.The lowest efficiency is more than 40%.The application results on a ROV indicate that the high speed on/off valve control propeller system has good dynamic and steady-state control performances.Its transient time is only about 1 s-1.5 s,and steady-state error is less than 5%.Meanwhile,the speed fluctuation is small,and the smooth propeller speed control effect is obtained.On the premise of good propeller speed control performance,the proposed high speed on/off valve control propeller can improve the effeciency of ROV propulsion system significantly,and provides another attractive ROV propulsion system choice for engineers.

Application of Simple Adaptive Control to Water Hydraulic Servo Cylinder System

Although conventional model reference adaptive control （MRAC） achieves good tracking performance for cylinder control, the controller structure is much more complicated and has less robustness to disturbance in real applications. This paper discusses the use of simple adaptive control （SAC） for positioning a water hydraulic servo cylinder system. Compared with MRAC, SAC has a simpler and lower order structure, i.e., higher feasibility. The control performance of SAC is examined and evaluated on a water hydraulic servo cylinder system. With the recent increased concerns over global environmental problems, the water hydraulic technique using pure tap water as a pressure medium has become a new drive source comparable to electric, oil hydraulic, and pneumatic drive systems. This technique is also preferred because of its high power density, high safety against fire hazards in production plants, and easy availability. However, the main problems for precise control in a water hydraulic system are steady state errors and overshoot due to its large friction torque and considerable leakage flow. MRAC has been already applied to compensate for these effects, and better control performances have been obtained. However, there have been no reports on the application of SAC for water hydraulics. To make clear the merits of SAC, the tracking control performance and robustness are discussed based on experimental results. SAC is confirmed to give better tracking performance compared with PI control, and a control precision comparable to MRAC （within 10 μm of the reference position） and higher robustness to parameter change, despite the simple controller. The research results ensure a wider application of simple adaptive control in real mechanical systems.

Nonlinear control for a class of hydraulic servo system

The dynamics of hydraulic systems are highly nonlinear and the system may be subjected to non-smooth and discontinuous nonlinearities due to directional change of valve opening, friction, etc. Aside from the nonlinear nature of hydraulic dynamics, hydraulic servo systems also have large extent of model uncertainties. To address these challenging issues, a robust state-feedback controller is designed by employing backstepping design technique such that the system output tracks a given signal arbitrarily well, and all signals in the closed-loop system remain bounded. Moreover, a relevant disturbance attenuation inequality is satisfied by the closed-loop signals. Compared with previously proposed robust controllers, this paper's robust controller based on backstepping recursive design method is easier to design, and is more suitable for implementation.

Motion Planning Based Coordinated Control for Hydraulic Excavators

Hydraulic excavator is one type of the most widely applied construction equipment for various applications mainly because of its versatility and mobility. Among the tasks performed by a hydraulic excavator, repeatable level digging or flat surface finishing may take a large percentage. Using automated functions to perform such repeatable and tedious jobs will not only greatly increase the overall productivity but more importantly also improve the operation safety. For the purpose of investigating the technology without loss of generality, this research is conducted to create a coordinate control method for the boom, arm and bucket cylinders on a hydraulic excavator to perform accurate and effective works. On the basis of the kinematic analysis of the excavator linkage system, the tip trajectory of the end-effector can be determined in terms of three hydraulic cylinders coordinated motion with a visualized method. The coordination of those hydraulic cylinders is realized by controlling three electro-hydraulic proportional valves coordinately. Therefore, the complex control algorithm of a hydraulic excavator can be simplified into coordinated motion control of three individual systems. This coordinate control algorithm was validated on a wheeled hydraulic excavator, and the validation results indicated that this developed control method could satisfactorily accomplish the auto-digging function for level digging or flat surface finishing.

Variants of Secondary Control with Power Recovery for Loading Hydraulic Driving Device

Current high power load simulators are generally incapable of obtaining both high loading performance and high energy efficiency. Simulators with high energy efficiency are used to simulate static-state load, and those with high dynamic performance typically have low energy efficiency. In this paper, the variants of secondary control（VSC） with power recovery are developed to solve this problem for loading hydraulic driving devices that operate under variable pressure, unlike classical secondary control（CSC） that operates in constant pressure network. Hydrostatic secondary control units are used as the loading components, by which the absorbed mechanical power from the tested device is converted into hydraulic power and then fed back into the tested system through 4 types of feedback passages（FPs）. The loading subsystem can operate in constant pressure network, controlled variable pressure network, or the same variable pressure network as that of the tested device by using different FPs. The 4 types of systems are defined, and their key techniques are analyzed, including work principle, simulating the work state of original tested device, static operation points, loading performance, energy efficiency, and control strategy, etc. The important technical merits of the 4 schemes are compared, and 3 of the schemes are selected, designed, simulated using AMESim and evaluated. The researching results show that the investigated systems can simulate the given loads effectively, realize the work conditions of the tested device, and furthermore attain a high power recovery efficiency that ranges from 0.54 to 0.85, even though the 3 schemes have different loading performances and energy efficiencies. This paper proposes several loading schemes that can achieve both high dynamic performance and high power recovery efficiency.

Synchronous tracking control of 6-DOF hydraulic parallel manipulator using cascade control method

The synchronous tracking control problem of a hydraulic parallel manipulator with six degrees of freedom (DOF) is complicated since the inclusion of hydraulic elements increases the order of the system.To solve this problem,cascade control method with an inner/outer-loop control structure is used,which masks the hydraulic dynamics with the inner-loop so that the designed controller takes into account of both the mechanical dynamics and the hydraulic dynamics of the manipulator.Furthermore,a cross-coupling control approach is introduced to the synchronous tracking control of the manipulator.The position synchronization error is developed by considering motion synchronization between each actuator joint and its adjacent ones based on the synchronous goal.Then,with the feedback of both position error and synchronization error,the tracking is proven to guarantee that both the position errors and synchronization errors asymptotically converge to zero.Moreover,the effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified by the experimental results performed with a 6-DOF hydraulic parallel manipulator.

Dynamic matrix predictive control for a hydraulic looper system in hot strip mills

Controlling the looper height and strip tension is important in hot strip mills because these variables affect both the strip quality and strip threading. Many researchers have proposed and applied a variety of control schemes for this problem, but the increasingly strict market demand for strip quality requires further improvements. This work describes a dynamic matrix predictive control(DMC) strategy that realizes the optimal control of a hydraulic looper multivariable system. Simulation experiments for a traditional controller and the proposed DMC controller were conducted using MATLAB/Simulink software. The simulation results show that both controllers acquire good control effects with model matching. However, when the model is mismatched, the traditional controller produces an overshoot of 32.4% and a rising time of up to 2120.2 ms, which is unacceptable in a hydraulic looper system. The DMC controller restricts the overshoot to less than 0.08%, and the rising time is less than 48.6 ms in all cases.

Flow Control for a Two-Stage Proportional Valve with Hydraulic Position Feedback

The current research mainly focuses on the flow control for the two-stage proportional valve with hydraulic position feedback which is named as Valvistor valve.Essentially,the Valvistor valve is a proportional throttle valve and the flow fluctuates with the change of load pressure.The flow fluctuation severely restricts the application of the Valvistor valve.In this paper,a novel flow control method the Valvistor valve is provided to suppress the flow fluctuation and develop a high performance proportional flow valve.The mathematical model of this valve is established and linearized.Fuzzy proportional-integral-derivative(PID)controller is adopted in the closed-loop flow control system.The feedback is obtained by the flow inference with back-propagation neural network(BPNN)based on the spool displacement in the pilot stage and the pressure differential across the main orifice.The results show that inference with BPNN can obtain the flow data fast and accurately.With the flow control method,the flow can keep at the set point when the pressure differential across the main orifice changes.The flow control method is effective and the Valvistor valve changes from proportional throttle valve to proportional flow valve.For the developed proportional flow valve,the settling time of the flow is very short when the load pressure changes abruptly.The performances of hysteresis,linearity and bandwidth are in a high range.The linear mathematical model can be verified and the assumptions in the system modeling is reasonable.

Active disturbance rejection control for hydraulic width control system for rough mill

The highly nonlinear behavior of the system limits the performance of classical linear proportional and integral （PI） controllers used for hot rolling. An active disturbance rejection controller is proposed in this paper to deal with the nonlinear problem of hydraulic servo system in order to preserve last response and small overshoot of control system. The active disturbance rejection （ADR） controller is composed of nonlinear tracking differentiator （TD）, extended state observer （ESO） and nonlinear feedback （NF） law. An example of the hydraulic edger system case study is investigated to show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed nonlinear controller, especially, in the circumstance of foreign disturbance and working condition variation, compared with classic PI controller.

STATISTIC LINEARIZATION CONTROL FOR HYDRAULIC ACTIVE DAMPING SUSPENSION

A statistic linearization analysis method of bad nolinear hydraulic active damping suspension is provided.Also the optimum control strategy of semi active suspension and graded control strategy based on it are puted forward.Experimental researches are carried out on a 2 DOF(degree of freedom) hydraulic active damping suspension test system.The results showed that an excellent control effectiveness could be obtained by using statistic linearization optimum control which unfortunely requests continuously regulationg the damp in an accurate way and costs much in engeering application.On the contrary,the results also showed that graded control is more practicable which has a control effectiveness close to the optimum control and costs less.

DERIVATION AND INTEGRAL SLIDING MODE VARIABLE STRUCTURE CONTROL OF HYDRAULIC VELOCITY TRACKING SYSTEM

The velocity tracking control of a hydraulic servo system is studied. Sincethe dynamics of the system are highly nonlinear and have large extent of model uncertainties, suchas big changes in load and parameters, a derivation and integral sliding mode variable structurecontrol scheme (DI-SVSC) is proposed. An integral controller is introduced to avoid the assumptionthat the derivative of desired signal must be known in conventional sliding mode variable structurecontrol, a nonlinear derivation controller is used to weaken the chattering of system. The designmethod of switching function in integral sliding mode control, nonlinear derivation coefficient andcontrollers of DI-SVSC is presented respectively. Simulation shows that the control approach is ofnice robustness and improves velocity tracking accuracy considerably.

Modeling and control of hydraulic excavator's arm

In order to find a feasible way to control excavator’s arm and realize autonomous excavation, the dynamic model for the boom of excavator’s arm which was regarded as a planar manipulator with three degrees of freedom was constructed with Lagrange equation. The excavator was retrofitted with electrohydraulic proportional valves, associated sensors (three inclinometers) and a computer control system (the motion controller of EPEC). The full nonlinear mathematic model of electrohydraulic proportional system was achieved. A discontinuous projection based on an adaptive robust controller to approximate the nonlinear gain coefficient of the valve was presented to deal with the nonlinearity of the whole system, the error was dealt with by robust feedback and an adaptive robust controller was designed. The experiment results of the boom motion control show that, using the controller, good performance for tracking can be achieved, and the peak tracking error of boom angles is less than 4°.