Identification and Real-Time Control of an Electrohydraulic Servo System Based on Nonlinear Backstepping

This paper studies the identification and the real-time control of an electrohydraulic servo system. The control strategy is based on the nonlinear backstepping approach. Emphasis is essentially on the tuning parameters effect and on how it influences the dynamic behavior of the errors. While the backstepping control ensures the global asymptotic stability of the system, the tuning parameters of the controller, nonetheless, do greatly affect the saturation and chattering in the control signal, and consequently, the dynamic errors. In fact, electrohydraulic systems are known to be highly nonlinear and non-differentiable due to many factors, such as leakage, friction, and especially, the fluid flow expression through the servo valve. These nonlinear terms appear in the closed loop dynamic errors. Their values are so large that in the presence of a poor design, they can easily overwhelm the effect of the controller parameters. Backstepping is used here because it is a powerful and robust nonlinear strategy. The experimental results are compared to those obtained with a real-time proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller, to prove that classic linear controllers fail to achieve a good tracking of the desired output, especially, when the hydraulic actuator operates at the maximum load. Before going through the controller design, the system parameters are identified. Despite the nonlinearity of the system, identification is based on the recursive least squares method. This is done by rewriting the mathematical model of the system in a linear in parameters (LP) form. Finally, the experimental results will show the effectiveness of the proposed approach in terms of guaranteed stability and zero tracking error