Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-82).

Based on the Lyapunov stability theorem, an adaptive sliding mode control scheme is proposed in this thesis for a class of mismatched perturbed multi-input multi-output (MIMO) dynamic systems to solve regualtion problems. The sliding surface function is firstly designed by treating some state variables as a pseudo controllers through the usage of sliding function to stabilize the rest of state variables. In this thesis the number of these pseudo controllers is less than that of the state variables to be stabilized. The second step is to design the controllers so that the trajectories of the controlled systems are able to reach sliding surface in a finite time. Some adaptive mechanisms are embedded in the sliding surface function and sliding mode controllers, so that not only the mismatched perturbations can be suppressed during the sliding mode, but also the information of upper bounds of some perturbations are not required when designing the sliding surface function and controllers. Once the controlled system enters the sliding mode, the state trajectories can achieve asymptotical stability under certain conditions. A numerical example and a practical example are given to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed design technique.

A quantized control means that the control force is restricted to takes only a finite number of prescribed levels. The well-known bang-bang control or relay control belongs to this category. This kind of control has the advantage of simple circuit realization using electronic switches or relays that feature low power consumption in their on-off operation. However, quantized control introduces noise and distortion, and even worse its high nonlinearity makes the stabilizing compensator design difficult. This thesis applies the concept of dynamic sliding mode to the synthesis of a multi-level quantized control, with the aim to stabilize the system, perform reference tracking and attenuate the switching noise. The applicability of the presented sliding-mode quantized control is demonstrated on a three-level buck converter. Compared with the conventional PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) scheme, it eliminates the use of a complex three-level PWM generator and a current sensor. A 12V/8V three-level buck converter with sliding mode quantized control is designed and realized, which shows the output voltage with 0.4625% of average DC error, 2.8988% of the static output ripple and 2.3% of load regulation error in response to the load current steps from 0A/3A to 3A/0A, at a slew rate of 6.25A/£gsec.

This thesis is concerned with the speed control of a brushless DC (BLDC) fan motor by switching its coil currents. Because fans are the most common cooling devices for computers, the demand for a quit and efficient fan that is capable of automatically regulating its speed according to temperature grows with each passing day. A mixed linear and switching control scheme which consists of two loop of feedback compensation for a two-phase BLDC fan motor is presented. Roughly speaking, the linear outer loop is mainly for speed regulation, and the inner loop is to generate a switching control signal while doing plant compensation. This control structure is simple and effective, emphasizing on low power consumption, accurate velocity regulation and low switching noise. The performance and stability requirement can be easily met by tuning several positive coefficients in the controller. The experiment shows an average steady-state regulation error of 0.563% in the range of fan¡¦s speed from 1050 to 2231 r.p.m.

With the ability to generate fine displacements with a resolution down to sub-nanometers, piezoelectric actuators (PEAs) have found wide applications in various nano-positioning systems. However, existence of various effects in PEAs, such as hysteresis and creep, as well as dynamics can seriously degrade the PEA performance or even lead to instability. This raises a great need to model and control PEAs for improved performance, which have drawn remarkable attention in the literature. Sliding mode control (SMC) shows its potential to the control of PEA, by which the hysteresis and other nonlinear effects can be regard as disturbance to the dynamic model and thus rejected or compensated by its switching control. To implement SMC in digital computers, this research is aimed at developing novel discrete models and discrete SMC (DSMC)-based control schemes for PEAs, along with their experimental validation. The first part of this thesis concerns with the modeling and control of one-degree of freedom (DOF) PEA, which can be treated as a single-input-single-output (SISO) system. Specifically, a novel discrete model based on the concept of auto-regressive moving average (ARMA) was developed for the PEA hysteresis; and to compensate for the PEA hysteresis and improve its dynamics, an output tracking integrated discrete proportional-integral-derivative-based SMC (PID-SMC) was developed. On this basis, by making use of the availability of PEA hysteresis models, two control schemes, named “the discrete inversion feedforward based PID-SMC” and “the discrete disturbance observer (DOB)-based PID-SMC”, were further developed. To illustrate the effectiveness of the developed models and control schemes, experiments were designed and conducted on a commercially available one-DOF PEA, as compared with the existing ones. The second part of the thesis presents the extension of the developed modeling and control methods to multi-DOF PEAs. Given the fact that details with regard to the PEA internal configurations is not typically provided by the manufacturer, a state space model based on the black box system identification was developed for the three-DOF PEA. The developed model was then integrated in the output tracking based discrete PID-SMC, with its effectiveness verified through the experiments on a commercially available three-DOF PEA. The superiority of the proposed control method over the conventional PID controller was also experimentally investigated and demonstrated. Finally, by integrating with a DOB in the discrete PID-based SMC, a novel control scheme is resulted to compensate for the nonlinearities of the three-DOF PEA. To verify its effectiveness, the discrete DOB based PID-SMC was applied in the control experiments and compared with the existing SMC. The significance of this research lies in the development of the discrete models and PID-based SMC for PEAs, which is of great help to improve their performance. The successful application of the proposed method in the control of multi-DOF PEA allows the application of SMC to the control of complicated multi-inputs-multi-outputs (MIMO) systems without details regarding the internal configuration. Also, integration of the inversion based feedforward control and the DOB in the SMC design has been proven effective for the tracking control of PEAs.

Based on the Lyapunov stability theorem, a modified stability analysis as well as a modified observer is proposed in this thesis for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with an existent high gain observer. By assuming that the first two state variables are indirectly measurable, reanalyzing the stability of the error dynamics is presented first. The advantage of this modified analytic method is that the upper bound of the disturbance distribution functions is not required to be known in advance, and the asymptotic stability is still guaranteed. Next, based on this existent observer, a slightly modified observer is presented for systems with disturbances whose upper bound is unknown. An adaptive mechanism is embedded in the proposed observer, so that the upper bound of perturbations is not required to be known beforehand. The resultant dynamics of estimation errors can be driven into the sliding surface in a finite time, and guarantee asymptotic stability. A numerical example and a practical example are given to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed observer.

Synchronization of two identical chaotic systems with matched and mismatched perturbations by utilizing adaptive sliding mode control (ASMC) technique is presented in this thesis. The sliding surface function is designed based on Lyapunov stability theorem and linear matrix inequality (LMI) optimization technique. Adaptive mechanisms embedded in the proposed control scheme are used to adapt the unknown upper bounds of the perturbations. The designed tracking controller can not only suppress the mismatched perturbations when the controlled dynamics (master-slave) are in the sliding mode, but also drive the trajectories of synchronization errors into a small bounded region whose size can be adjusted through the designed parameters. The stability of overall controlled synchronization systems is guaranteed. Application of proposed chaotic synchronization technique to secure communication as well as several numerical examples are given to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed design technique.

Based on the Lyapunov stability theorem, an adaptive sliding mode control scheme is proposed in this thesis for a class of mismatched perturbed multi-input multi-output (MIMO) dynamic systems to solve stabilization problems. In order to suppress the perturbations in the control systems, adaptive mechanisms are employed both in sliding function and control effort, so that the information of upperbound of some perturbations is not required when designing the proposed control scheme. Due to the novel design of sliding function, the state trajectories of this system can achieve asymptotical stability in the sliding mode even if mismatched perturbations exist. In addition, with an adaptive mechanism embedded in the proposed control scheme, the controller can drive the state's trajectory into the designated sliding surface in a finite time. A numerical example is demonstrated for showing the applicability of the proposed design technique.

Two robust control strategies are proposed in this dissertation for a class of multi-input multi-output dynamic systems with matched and mismatched perturbations. First of all, a novel design methodology of switching variables is proposed for solving the regulation problems. A serial state transformations are needed in order to design pseudo feedback gains and adaptive mechanisms. By utilizing the pseudo control input gain embedded in each of the switching variable, the proposed controller can not only suppress the mismatched perturbations when the controlled systems are in the sliding mode, but also attain locally asymptotic stability. The design of a robust output tracking controller is presented next for solving the tracking problems. Without utilizing the information of state variable, the proposed output feedback tracking controllers are capable of driving the state tracking errors into a small bounded region whose size can be adjusted through the designed parameters, and guarantee the stability of controlled systems. These two robust control schemes are designed by means of the variable structure control technique with sliding mode and Lyapunov stability theorem. Each controller contains three parts. The first part is for eliminating measurable feedback signals. The second part is used for adjusting the convergent rate of state variables (or tracking errors) of the controlled system. The third part is an adaptive control mechanism, which is to adapt some unknown constants of the least upper bounds of perturbations, so that the knowledge of the least upper bounds of matched and mismatched perturbations are not required. Several numerical examples and an application of controlling aircraft's velocity are demonstrated for showing the feasibility of the proposed control methodologies.

In this dissertation, four nonlinear controllers are proposed for different class of multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems with matched and mismatched perturbations. All the plants to be controlled contains input uncertainty. The technique of the adaptive sliding mode control (ASMC) scheme is first introduced in order to solve the regulation or tracking problems. By applying adaptive techniques to the design of a novel sliding surface as well as to the design of sliding mode controller, one can not only enable the fulfillment of reaching mode in fi- nite time, but also suppress the mismatched perturbations when system is in the sliding mode. Secondly, the design methodology of block backstepping is proposed to solve the regulation problem in chapter 5. Some adaptive mechanisms are employed in the virtual input controller, so that the mismatched perturbations can be tackled and the proposed robust controller can guarantee stability of the controlled systems. All these control schemes are designed by means of Lyapunov stability theorem. Each robust controller contains two parts. The first part is for eliminating measurable feedback signals of the plant, and the second part is an adaptive control mechanism, which is capable of adapting some unknown constants embedded in the least upper bounds of perturbations, so that the knowledge of the least upper bounds of matched and mismatched perturbations is not required and can achieve asymptotic stability. Several numerical examples and industrial applications are demonstrated for showing the feasibility of the proposed control schemes.