Optimum Tuning of 1&2-dof TID-F Controllers for a MAGLEV System with Experimental Validation

In this work, a rigorous comparative study is carried out between the 1-dof tilt-integral-derivative controller with filter (1-dof TID-F) and the 2-dof tilt-integral-derivative controller with filter (2-dof TID-F) for simultaneous stabilization and precise position control of a laboratory scale magnetic levitation system (MAGLEV). TID controller is basically a modification of the traditional PID controller in which the proportional gain is swapped out for a non-integer order tilting term. Again, in series with the derivative term, a fractional order (FO) filter is introduced to reshape the frequency response curve because FO system has tremendous potential in modelling and control of inner dynamics of highly non-linear and unstable physical system like MAGLEV. For designing and tuning of 1&2-dof TID-F controller parameters a modern soft computing based nature inspired optimization algorithm, popularly known as, Moth Flame Optimization is deployed. Various simulation and real-time results demonstrate that the proposed 2-dof TID- F controller improves time and frequency domain performance metrics while also providing superior reference input tracking ability.