Mechatronics 22 (2012) 766777

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Mechatronics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mechatronics

Output feedback nonlinear control for electro-hydraulic systems

Wonhee Kim a, Daehee Won a,c, Donghoon Shin a, Chung Choo Chung b,
a
Department of Electrical Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul 133-791, South Korea
b
Division of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul 133-791, South Korea
c
Division for Applied Robot Technology, Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, Ansan, Gyeonggi-Do 426-171, South Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper we present an output feedback nonlinear control for position tracking of electro-hydraulic
Received 17 August 2011 systems (EHSs). Although previous nonlinear control methods improved the position tracking perfor-
Accepted 29 March 2012 mance of EHS, all of the methods require full state feedback. However, due to cost and space limitations,
Available online 26 April 2012
it is not always possible to measure the full state of the EHS. The proposed method consists of a high gain
observer and a passivity-based controller. The high gain observer is designed to estimate the full state,
Keywords: and the passivity-based control is implemented for position tracking. In order to design the passivity-
Electro-hydraulic system
based controller with the high gain observer, a dened Lyapunov condition guarantee that the origin
Passivity
High gain observer
of the tacking error dynamics is exponentially stable by selecting the controller gain. The stability of
Lyapunov theorem the closed-loop is studied using the singular perturbation theorem. The performance of the proposed
method is validated through simulations and experiments.
 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction of EHS in [610]. The chattering in the control action, which is

Electro-hydraulic systems (EHSs) are important in modern
industrial automation and have been used in many kinds of mech-
anizations, including robot and aircraft actuators and rolling mills.
Compared to their electrical counterparts, they also have a high
power to weight ratio [1,2]. Furthermore, they are able to rapidly
generate very high forces. However, EHSs exhibit signicantly
higher nonlinearities in their dynamics because of the compress-
ibility of hydraulic uid and the complex ow properties of servo
valves. Therefore, the investigation of position control for EHSs
has been of great interest from both academic and industrial
perspectives.
Various techniques have been used to control the position or
force of an EHS. Local linearization of the nonlinear dynamics
about a nominal operating point was proposed in [1]. However,
the nonlinear behavior of the system requires the use of conserva-
tive loop gain that sacrices controller performance in favor of
robustness. In [3,4], the use of pressure feedback was proposed
in order to improve the performance of proportional integral deriv-
ative (PID) controllers in EHSs, but stability was not proven. An
indirect adaptive control incorporating a linear model of EHS was
designed for position tracking [5] but use of the linear model re-
sults in limitations on the efciency of the controller. Variable
structure control (VSC) strategies have been studied for the control
Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 2 2220 1724; fax: +82 2 2291 5307.
E-mail addresses: alukard@hanyang.ac.kr (W. Kim), daehee@kitech.re.kr
(D. Won), shin211@hanyang.ac.kr (D. Shin), cchung@hanyang.ac.kr (C.C. Chung).
inherent in VSC, can easily excite high frequency modes and may
result in the system instability. Feedback linearization has also
been used to develop EHS [1113]. Various methods based on
Lyapunov function have been studied for EHS and the valve
dynamics was considered to make EHS an input afne system.
Backstepping approaches were applied to EHS [1420] for expo-
nential convergence of the desired position or load pressure.
Although backstepping controllers are long and complex [15], the
backstepping controllers can improve the position/force tracking
performance of the EHS. Passivity-based control is a design tech-
nique that uses passivation to achieve the control objective [21].
This technique has been successfully applied to a nonlinear model
and was shown to be very effective for the EHS [2125]. The pas-
sivity-based control is simpler and more straightforward than a
backstepping algorithm since the synthetic inputs in the passiv-
ity-based control are decoupled. Thus, modeling error effects asso-
ciated with the controller are compartmentalized [22]. Although
previous nonlinear control methods improved the position track-
ing performance of EHSs, all of these methods require full state
feedback. However, it is not always possible to measure the full
state of the EHS due to cost and space limitations. Furthermore,
measurement noise is associated with the pressure sensor and it
is impossible to measure the spool position of the servo-valve un-
less the position sensor is embedded in the servo-valve. Thus, the
estimation of the full state of the EHS is necessary. Several observ-
ers were designed to estimate the full state of active suspensions
and EHS [2629]. Since only observer designs were studied, only
the stabilities of the observers were proven. Because the designs

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2012.03.008
 W. Kim et al. / Mechatronics 22 (2012) 766777
of the nonlinear controllers, which are designed for the strict feed-
back form, are not seperated from those of the observers, closed-
loop stability should be studied. Several observer-based nonlinear
controllers were proposed [30,31]. In [30] only acceleration was
estimated by the observer. A proportional integral (PI) observer
was designed to estimate full state [31]. Although the estimation
performance was validated, the closed-loop stability was not
proven.
The main contribution of this paper is the design and imple-
mentation of an output feedback nonlinear control for position
tracking in EHS. Our previous research [32] studied for the rotary
type EHS and was based on simulations with focus on the design
of the controller and the observer. This paper solves the problem
for the linear type EHS, and focuses on the gain selection of the
passivity-based controller for the output feedback control and
the proof of the closed-loop stability. Moreover, its performance
is validated via experiments. The high gain observer is designed
to estimate the full state, and the high gain technique is used to re-
duce the effects of the nonlinear terms. The passivity-based con-
troller [22] is implemented for position tracking. Although the
passivity-based control is simpler and more straightforward than
the backstepping algorithm [22], the passivity-based controller
guarantees only asymptotic stability of the tracking error dynam-
ics. Therefore, it is difcult for the passivity-based controller to
be designed with a high gain observer since the exponential stabil-
ities of the quasi-steady-state model and the boundary layer sys-
tem are required for the stability of the singular perturbed
system [34]. The problem is solved in this paper by selecting the
controller gain such that the origin of the tracking error dynamics
is exponentially stable. We prove that the closed-loop system is
asymptotically stable using the singular perturbation method if
the condition is satised. Therefore, the observer gain is chosen
with consideration of the controller gain. The performance of the
proposed method is validated through simulation and
experiments.
2. Mathematical model of electro-hydraulic systems
An double rod EHS designed for a quadruped robot by the Korea
Institute of Industrial Technology is depicted in Fig. 1. This system
Ps
Pr
Ps
qA
Cel PA
PA
VA
xp
Fig. 1. Representative EHS.
767
includes a servo-valve to control the movement of the actuator, ar-
ranged as an open-loop system without spool position feedback
and operated by the electrical input current of a torque motor.
The ow of hydraulic uid into the cylinder chambers, which are
connected to a servo valve through cylinder ports, is controlled
by the servo-valve and is inuenced by load pressure, which is
the difference between the pressures of two actuators: ports A
and B. The force of the actuator is produced by the load pressure.
In this section, we introduce a nonlinear mathematical model of
the EHS shown in Fig. 1. For the modeling of EHS [1,2], we assume
that
 The valve is matched symmetrically.
 The spool of the valve is ideal, with zero lapping.
 The spool valve radial-clearance leakage is negligible.
 The valve restriction areas are linearly proportional to the spool
valve opening.
 The loading force, FL is linearly proportional to the piston dis-
placement, and the load pressure, PL where PL is the differential
pressure between PA and PB [N/m2] is dened as follows:
F L AP PA  PB ;
1
PL PA  PB F L =AP ;
where AP is the pressure area of the piston [m2].
 The volume of the chamber are VA = V0 + AxP and VB = V0  AxP,
where xp is the piston position [m], and V0 is initial volume of
the chamber, including hoses, when xp xpmax =2, and xpmax is
maximum stroke of the cylinder, respectively. And then, the
total volume of uid in both chambers, Vt is dened as follows:
V t V A V B 2V 0 : 2
Although nonlinear model of the mechanical behavior of servo-
valve can be developed from the relationship between the spool
position and the input current the valve dynamics can be approx-
imated as the second order linear dynamics [33] by
xv 2fxn x_ v x2n xv K v x2n i; 3
where xv is the spool position of the servo-valve [m], i is the input
current of the torque motor [mA], f is the damping ratio [rad], xn
Ps
Pr
xv
qB
A
Cel PB
PB
m
Cil PL VB
b
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