Proceedings of the 8th
World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation
July 6-9 2010, Jinan, China
XPC-based Real Time Control System for an Electro-
hydraulic Servo Shaking Table *
Jianjun Yao, Wei Fu, Shenghai Hu and Sheng Liu
College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, College of Automation
Harbin Engineering University
Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China
travisyao@126.com
Abstract – Shaking table is widely used in aerospace,
automobile and architecture for research in the fields of Civil,
Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. Three variable controller
is applied for an electro-hydraulic servo shaking table which has
eight sets of hydraulic system and is under acceleration control.
To achieve real-time control performance for the shaking table
system, XPC-based control system which is operated by host-
target type is developed. The host computer is used to send
commands and monitor the system, while the target computer
equipped with data acquisition boards is used for real-time
computation. The logic controller in the target computer is used
to system and error diagnosis. The two computer are connected
by Ethernet. The proposed control system is easy to program,
adjust parameters and has good real-time performance.
Index Terms – Electro-hydraulic servo shaking table. Three
variable controller. Acceleration control. Host-target type. XPC-
based control
I. INTRODUCTION
A shaking table is an apparatus used for the shaking test
of a structure or an apparatus for shaking a structure by
driving a table on which the structure as a specimen under test
is placed by an actuator [1]. The shaking table can be moved
to simulate desired vibration motion, such as earthquake
ground motion, road simulation, and so on. In the case of
seismic test, the earthquake resistance of a structure is tested.
Because the general purpose of the shaking test is to evaluate
the response of a structure to predetermined acceleration
waveforms, it is required to reproduce the predetermined
accelerations with accuracy. Therefore, increasing the
accuracy of such an acceleration waveform resulting from
shaking is obtained by installing displacement and/or
acceleration sensors on the shaking table in order to measure
the motion of the table and feed back the measured results to a
control unit with predetermined accelerations as target values
[2].
There is hardware which can be used for controller. A
digital signal processor (DSP) is a special-purpose CPU that
provides ultra-fast instruction sequences, such as shift, add,
multiply and add, which are commonly used in math-intensive
signal processing applications. DSP-based solutions have been
applied in many fields [3-9]. It is often implemented using
specialised microprocessors and needs a set of development
* This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 50905037), the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher
Education of China (No. 20092304120014) and Foundation of Harbin Engineering University (No. HEUFT09013)
2026
978-1-4244-6712-9/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE
tools including C compilers and a DSP assembly optimizer to
simplify programming and scheduling.
Though embedded microprocessor systems are used every
day by millions of people, these systems are not seen, because
they are buried inside the product or the equipment. Because
of its small volume and compact structure, they are used in
places [10-13], for example, micro robot, where it requires
small size.
In [14], a personal computer including DAQ boards and a
DSP board is used to send commands and obtain the feedback
signals for a uni-directional shaking table. This configuration
is suitable for very simple shaking table only. Ammanagi
developed a DSP-based controller for a three-axis earthquake
shake table, because the control algorithm is simple and has
little calculation burden [15].
When a shaking table requires high force, wide bandwidth
and high dynamic performance, electro-hydraulic servo
system is an ideal choice because of its merits, such as large
torque, high respond speed, high stiffness and high force-to-
weight ratio [16-17]. A large-scale electro-hydraulic shaking
table is usually multi-channel, multi-axis and has several
hydraulic actuators. For example, the E-defense shaking table
in Japan is driven by 14 hydraulic cylinders. For a large-scale
hydraulic shaking table, there are many statuses including
pressure, displacement, speed, acceleration, state of hydraulic
supply system, needed to be measured, thus it needs more
input/output ports and large storage memory, and it should be
run fast enough to guarantee its real-time performance. With
the increasing accuracy requirements for shaking table, it
demands for advanced algorithm, which is also complex, so
the control system should be easy to programming and can
solve the computation burden. Both DSPs and
microprocessors are not suitable for such applications. To
meet the development requirements of electro-hydraulic servo
shaking table, XPC-based control system is developed for the
shaking table system using industrial computer and MATLAB
software. The proposed configuration is easy to program,
control and monitor, and has large storage volume, extended
ports, high real-time performance.
II. ELECTRO-HYDRAULIC SERVO SHAKING TABLE
The electro-hydraulic servo shaking table is comprised of
several components which are designed to work smoothly and
effectively together. Every component of the shaking table is
designed based on the requirements of the entire system. Fig.1
is a model of a three-axis electro-hydraulic servo shaking
table, which is controlled by eight hydraulic actuators, four in
the horizontal plane and four in the vertical plane.
Table
Servo valve
Hydraulic cylinder
Fig. 1 The model of electro-hydraulic servo shaking table.
Three variable controller is used as basic controller to
generate vibration motion for the shaking table. Fig. 3 shows
the control system with three variable controller. For a shaking
table, it usually needs to reproduce the expected acceleration
response, so the input is an acceleration signal [18]. The input
filter is applied to generate the three input states:
displacement, velocity and acceleration. Displacement and
acceleration signals of the shaking table are derived by
sensors, and are transformed to the translational and angular
signals. The results of the feedback filter are translational and
angular displacement, velocity and acceleration. The outputs
of the input filter and the feedback filter are used for inputs for
the three variable controller, which achieves control values.
The outputs of the controller are transformed to generate the
valued for 8 hydraulic cylinders.

Fig.2 is the block diagram of the shaking table system. Disp.

The host computer is a common commercial PC, and is used Vel.
Acc.
as a user interface to send commands and monitor the system
state. The target computer is an industrial computer which is Disp.
Vel.
equipped with data acquisition boards including ADC, DAC Acc. Disp. Acc.
and digital I/O, and used as real-time controller for computing
the total control algorithm. Ethernet, which is a family of
frame-based computer networking technologies for local area Fig. 3 The control system of shaking table.
networks, supplies communication between the two
computers. The table is a platform which acts as the moving Fig.4 shows the block diagram of the three variable
base for the model structures fixed on the surface, and its controller, which can be separated into a feedback part which
motion is controlled by the movement of the hydraulic has three feedback loops: displacement, velocity and
cylinders fixed to the table. The foundation is made of acceleration feedback loops whose feedback gains
concrete. are K df , K vf and K af , and a feed-forward part whose feed-
forward gains are K dr , K vr and K ar [1,18-19].

K dr
r
K vr
r +
+ +
K ar
r

K af +
+ u
− +
y
Fig. 2 The system overall configuration. K vf
+ +
The shaking table is an electro-hydraulic system, meaning − + +
that electrical signals control and regulate hydraulic fluid with y
pressure to move the table. An electrical signal representing K df
+
the desired table motion is sent by the host computer through −
the Ethernet to the target computer, which evaluates the y
difference between the desired motion and the actual motion Fig. 4 Three variable controller.
of the table. The controller then opens or closes the servo
valve appropriately to port a portion of hydraulic fluid flow The robustness and disturbance suppression performance
which is provided by the hydraulic power supply. This fluid of the control system is adjusted by feedback gains, and the
drives actuators to move in the desired direction. Feedback reference tracking performance is improved by adjusting feed-
signals from the system can be fed back to the target computer forward gains. Since the number of parameters of the
for the purposes of control and data acquisition. Acquired data controller is six, it is feasible to manually tune it on site
needed to display or save on the host computer is sent by the according to the system stability and acceleration frequency
Ethernet. bandwidth. Displacement of the hydraulic actuator and

2027
acceleration on the shaking table are measured by sensors. The computer, separate from a host computer, for running real-
output of the three variable controller is the control signal to time applications.
drive the servo valve. The feedback polynomial can be written Fig.7 is the block diagram of XPC-based control system.
as Using Simulink blocks and Stateflow charts control block can
be established. I/O blocks can be added to the control model
S ( s ) = K df + K vf s + K af s 2 . which is compiled to create executable code and downloaded
from the host computer to the target computer running the
and the feed-forward polynomial is XPC target real-time kernel.
Fig.8 is the control model programmed by Simulink
T ( s ) = K dr + K vr s + K ar s 2 .
blocks and Stateflow charts under XPC environment. The
Fig. 5 is the block diagram of the input filter which signal generator is used to produce acceleration waves, such as
generates the input three states: displacement, velocity and sine wave, chirp signal and random wave. In the controller
acceleration. From Fig. 5, the transfer function of the input block, it contains input and feedback filters, transformations,
filter can be rewritten as and the three variable controller. The data acquisition system
for the shaking table shares a goal of acquiring, analyzing and
d Ku Ku presenting information from sensors. It incorporates sensor,
Gin − filter = = 2 = . signal conditioning and data acquisition device including A/D,
R s + vf s + d f ⎛s
2
2ζ ⎞
d f ⎜ 2 + 0 s + 1⎟ D/A and digital I/O boards. The output of the controller is
⎝ ω0 ω0 ⎠ injected into the D/A board to drive the hydraulic systems.
Physical signals including pressure, temperature,
1 vf displacement, acceleration are obtained through A/D board
where ω0 = d f , ζ 0 = .
2 df from corresponding sensors. A digital I/O board is applied to
limit and proximity switches, level gauge, pressure switches,
pumps, motors, relays. The tick block is used to generate pulse
Acc.
Ku Vel. for timing for the logic controller.
R +
1 1
− Host computer Target computer
s s
−
vf

df
Disp. Fig. 7 XPC-based control system.

Fig. 5 The input filter.

The shaking table in Fig.1 has eight electro-hydraulic

servo control loops. Every servo control loop has similar
structure and is shown in Fig.6. The servo controller compares
the feedback signal from sensor with the input to produce a
command signal to drive the servo valve, which adjusts the
flow of pressurized oil to move the hydraulic cylinder until the
desired position is attained.

Input

Fig. 8 Simulink control model under XPC environment.

Fig. 6 Block diagram of an electro-hydraulic servo control system.
III. XPC-BASED CONTROL SYSTEM
MATLAB provides a command-line interface for XPC
target, which is a PC-compatible product installed on a host
computer running a Microsoft Windows operating system.
XPC target is a solution for prototyping, testing, hardware-in-
the-loop simulations and deploying real-time systems using
standard PC hardware. It is an environment that uses a target
A number of complex issues due to the unstructured,
uncertainties make it unsafe during its vibration. The logic
controller block is used to solve the problem to guarantee its
safety. As a control system, control errors denote the system is
unable to accurately control. Continuity errors denote a sensor
reported an unexpectedly large change in a short time. This
error may indicate the sensor has failed, or an external force,

2028
like a collision or extreme or immovable load has pushed the
joint out of control.
Communication errors occur when the host computer
loses contact with one or more sensors. This may be a faulty
sensor, faulty connection between the host computer and the
target computer, controller failure, or broken electrical power.
Time-out errors occur when the controller receives no
communications from the host computer for a specified time,
for example, three sample times. This error may be caused by
a failure of electrical power to the controller, or by a faulty
connection between the two computers.
Some errors, for example, signals that exceed any preset
tolerance or measured sensor values, may be followed by
warnings. The most common warning is that hydraulics have
been disabled for safety reasons.
The unstructured and uncertainty environment also
presents many challenging problems in the event of system
failures for the electro-hydraulic servo shaking table. For any
tolerable failures, the shaking table should be able to adjust
automatically for the failure and complete the assigned task.
Therefore, an efficient and effective fault tolerant system
becomes imperative for the whole system. The options under
the fault and error diagnosis can be used to diagnose faults in
the target computer and host computer, and to display, reset,
and configure system error checking.
The fault tolerant in the logic controller block consists of
three areas: fault detection, fault isolation, and fault
accommodation. The fault detection process is a high-level
function that monitors the overall system, both hardware and
software, for any signals that exceed any preset tolerance or
measured sensor values. Once a fault is detected, the fault
isolation process determines the exact cause and location of
the fault and its severity. If the fault is evaluated to be
tolerable, the fault accommodation process either
accommodates or reconfigures the control architecture to
successfully carry out the assigned task.
Error monitoring exists to protect the shaking table from
damage. Automatic shutdown due to error checking indicates
the system is at risk. The hydraulic isolation valve is normally
enabled and disabled by operator input to the host computer,
but may also be disabled automatically by the logic controller
when system errors are detected or when certain menus are
accessed where the system operation is unneeded or unsafe.
model.rtw
model.c, model.h
model.mk
model.exe
Fig. 9 Compile process.
With XPC Target, the target application can be built and
downloaded to the target computer using the build command
2029
in Real-Time Workshop, which provides the utilities to
convert the Simulink model into C code and then with a third-
party compiler. The compile process is shown in Fig. 9. The
compiler creates executable code from the C code generated
from Real-Time Workshop. XPC Target uses this executable
code to create an executable image that runs with the XPC
target kernel on the target computer.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
For an electro-hydraulic servo shaking table which is a
multi-loop servo control system, it has many physical to be
measured, and its control is complex, thus there is
computation burden. To achieve real-time control for electro-
hydraulic servo shaking table, XPC-based control system is
developed using a host computer and a target computer. The
host computer is used as human interface, and the target
computer is used to real-time compute. Using command inputs
and feedback physical signals from A/D board and digital I/O
board, the logic controller is programmed to analyze the
system state, and thus judge the total system is in normal
working condition or not. Ethernet is used to communicate
between the two computers. The proposed control system is
powerful, simple, extremely stable and fully customizable.
REFERENCES
[1] J.–J. Yao, “Research on acceleration harmonic cancellation of electro-
hydraulic servo shaking table”. Harbin Institute of Technology. 2007, pp.
1-10, 41-45.
[2] Sugano, “Servo mechanism of three dimensional six freedom shaking
table”, Machine Design, vol.35, no.4, pp. 25-26, April 1991.
[3] J.-P. Zhao and J. Liu, “Modeling, simulation and hardware
implementation of an effective induction motor controller”, 2009
International Conference on Computer Modeling and Simulation. 2009,
pp. 136-140.
[4] P. Wei, Z.-X. Zhan and H.-Q. Chen, “A DSP-based active power filter
for three-phase power distribution systems”, 2009 International
Conference on Computer Engineering and Technology. 2009, pp. 210-
214.
[5] W. Yao and Z.-M. Qian, “Improved load sharing control techniques for
inverters used in a microgrid”, Int. J. Emerg. Electr. Power Syst. vol.10,
no.1 , pp. 156-165, January 2009.
[6] H. Wang, Y.-B. Ni and K. Li. “An open architecture control system for
parallel kinematic machines based on multi-DSP parallel procession”,
Key Eng. Mater. no.392 , pp. 667-671, March 2009.
[7] W.- J. Zhu and Y.-G. He, “Study on the method of neural network based
fault diagnosis of analog circuits with its intelligent testing system”, J
Harbin Institute of Technology. vol.41, no.7, pp. 39-45, July 2009.
[8] F.-R. Kou and Z.-D. Fang, “Development of a novel active suspension
for vehicle”, J Vib Shock. vol.27, no.3, pp. 165-170, March 2008.
[9] I. Baturone, J. Francisco, and V. Blanco, “Design of embedded DSP-
Based fuzzy controllers for autonomous mobile robots”, IEEE Trans.
Ind. Electron. Vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 928-936, February 2008,
[10] G. Manoj, B.-K. Kaushik and L. Chand, “Performance analysis of post
processing algorithm and implementation on ARM7TDMI”, 2009
International Conference on Computer Engineering and Technology,
2009, pp. 560-564.
[11] J.-H. Li, J.-P Chen, and Z.-B. Li, “Control system design of millimeter
scale micro robot for micro assembly”, Chin. J. Sci. Instrum. vol. 30, no.
5, pp. 980-983, May 2009.
[12] M. Zhong, “Mobile self-reconfigurable robot based on modularity”,
High Technology Letters. vol.15, no.1, pp. 26-31, January 2009.
[13] Y. Li, H. Wan and M.-J. Li, “Design of the robot's mobile under pan
based on ARM”, Journal of East China University of Science and
Technology. vol. 34, no. 5, pp. 755-758, May 2008.
[14] J.-M. Matthew, “Analysis, design, and construction of a shaking table
 facility”. Rice University, pp. 1-30, 1997.
[15] S. Ammanagi, “Development of a digitally-controlled three-axis
earthquake shake table”, Curr. Sci. vol. 91, no. 2, pp. 190-203, February
2006.
[16] J.-J. Yao, X.-C. Wang, Z.-S. Wu, et al, “Variable structure control
applied in electro-hydraulic servo system with ANN”, Chin J Mech Eng
Engl Ed. vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 32-36, January 2006.
[17] J.-J. Yao, L.-Q. Wang, H.-Z. Jiang, et al, “Adaptive feed-forward
compensator for harmonic cancellation in electro-hydraulic servo
system”, Chin J Mech Eng Engl Ed. Vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 77-81, February
2008.
[18] Y. Tagawa and K. Kajiwara, “Controller development for the E-Defense
shaking table”, Proc Inst Mech Eng Part I J Syst Control Eng. vol. 221,
no. 12, pp. 171-181, November 2007.
[19] J.-W. Han, L.-M. Yu, H. Zhao, et al, “Study of three state controller of
seismic simulating shaking table”, Journal of Harbin Institute of
Technology. vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 21-23, March 1999.

2030