Simulation and experimental studies on perfect tracking optimal control of an electrohydraulic actuator system

Abstract

This paper presents a perfect tracking optimal control for discrete-time nonminimum phase of electrohydraulic actuator (EHA) system by adopting a combination of feedback and feedforward controller. A linear-quadratic regulator (LQR) is firstly designed as a feedback controller, and a feedforward controller is then proposed to eliminate the phase error emerged by the LQR controller during the tracking control. The feedforward controller is developed by implementing the zero phase error tracking control (ZPETC) technique in which the main difficulty arises from the nonminimum phase system with no stable inverse. Subsequently, the proposed controller is performed in simulation and experimental studies where the EHA system is represented in discrete-time model that has been obtained using system identification technique. It also shows that the controller offers better performance as compared to conventional PID controller in reducing phase and gain error that typically occurred in positioning or tracking systems.