Model predictive force control of hardware implementation for electro-hydraulic servo system

Abstract

This manuscript introduces the application of Model Predictive Control (MPC) for high force control precision in a real industrial electro-hydraulic servo system (EHSS). Moreover, it presents a fractional order control (FOC) and conventional controllers (CC) based on genetic algorithm (GA). The GA technique has been used to tune the parameters of FOC and CC approach. In order to verify the ability of the proposed controller applied to the hydraulic press machines emulator using EHSS, a hardware implementation of a test press system is also suggested and setup to be used in this research. As a result, the study has been investigated using a simulation model then verified via the experimental implementation. In fact, the EHSS plays an important role in many industrial applications, especially in flight simulators, aircraft landing gear system, material testing machine and hydraulic press machines for which the high accuracy and fast response of the force or pressure control are exceedingly necessary. Real-time experiments on the EHSS are carried out to evaluate the proposed control approach in a large system parameters variation of working environments. Considerable improvement in the performance generated by the designed MPC controller is compared with the traditional and fractional order controllers. Moreover, the results show that the performance criteria in terms of settling, rise times, system overshoots, system parameters variation and applying different test signals are good values in case of applying MPC over using FOC and CC in this study. As a general conclusion, one can conclude that the MPC has the priority of applying it in the field of the industrial EHSS. The obtained results are promising in the field of mechatronic.