Enhanced Nonlinear PID Controller for Positioning Control of Maglev System

Abstract

Magnetic levitation (maglev) is a way of using electromagnetic fields to levitate objects without any noise or the need for petrol or air. Due to its highly nonlinear and unstable behavior, numerous control solutions have been proposed to overcome it. However, most of them still acquire precise dynamic model parameters, or deep understanding of control theory. To account the complexity in the design procedure, a practical controller consists of classical and modern control approaches are proposed. This chapter presents a practical controller for high positioning performance of a magnetic levitation system. Three strategies of the proposed controller where the PI-PD controller is to enhance transient response, the model-based feedforward control (FF) is incorporated with the PI-PD controller to enhance the overshoot reduction characteristic in attaining a better transient response, and lastly the disturbance compensator (Kz) is integrated as an additional feedback element to reduce the sensitivity function magnitude for robustness enhancement. The proposed controller - FF PI-PD + Kz has a simple and straightforward design procedure. The usefulness of the proposed controller is evaluated experimentally.