Robust servo control design for an electro-pneumatic clutch system using the H∞ method

This paper presents a robust servo control synthesis to design a position controller for an electro-pneumatic Clutch By Wire (CBW) system. In order to achieve high reference tracking performance and meet stability specifications, the H_∞ synthesis is applied for controller design. The nonlinear dynamic model of the CBW system is shown and transformed into an appropriate coordinate system. Then exact linearization is performed via state feedback. In this way, the controller can be designed to provide the track of the reference signal with predefined dynamics and reduce the effects of the disturbances on the performance using the H_∞ method. Moreover a controller order reduction is proposed based on the Hankel singular value based model order reduction. In order to handle the saturation of the control signal a high gain anti-windup is applied. Finally the simulation results are demonstrated and evaluated.

I. Introduction

In the last decade, several papers have been published in the topic of the position control of electro-pneumatic clutch actuators. These actuators are driven by proportional-or on/off valves, which yield that the control signals can be continuous and have to be quantized respectively.