DC motor speed control using fuzzy logic

controller
Cite as: AIP Conference Proceedings 1930, 020026 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5022920
Published Online: 02 February 2018

N. L. Ismail, K. A. Zakaria, N. S. Moh Nazar, et al.

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AIP Conference Proceedings 1930, 020026 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5022920 1930, 020026

© 2018 Author(s).
 DC Motor Speed Control using Fuzzy Logic Controller
N. L. Ismaila), K. A. Zakariab), N. S. Moh Nazarc), M. Syaripuddind), A. S. N.
Mokhtare) and S. Thanakodif)

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, National Defense University of
Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
a)
Corresponding author: norlaili@upnm.edu.my
b)
zakaria@gmail.com
c)
shiema@upnm.edu.my
d)
muniati@upnm.edu.my
e)
anis@upnm.edu.my
f)
suresh@upnm.edu.my

Abstract. The automatic control has played a vital role in the advance of engineering and science. Nowadays in
industries, the control of direct current (DC) motor is a common practice thus the implementation of DC motor controller
speed is important. The main purpose of motor speed control is to keep the rotation of the motor at the present speed and
to drive a system at the demand speed. The main purpose of this project is to control speed of DC Series Wound Motor
using Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC). The expectation of this project is the Fuzzy Logic Controller will get the best
performance compared to dc motor without controller in terms of settling time (Ts), rise time (Tr), peak time (Tp) and
percent overshoot (%OS).

INTRODUCTION
The speed control is one of important component in Direct Current motor (DC motor) operation. In controlling
the speed of a DC motor, some improvement needs to be done toward speed regulation during transient loading
conditions. The control includes a regulating circuit that having an output for controlling the armature voltage to the
motor. An input speed reference signal corresponding to the desired speed is provided to the regulating circuit. A
feedback signal proportional to armature voltage is also provided to the regulating circuit to establish an error signal
for operating the control to regulate the voltage to the motor and therefore the motor speed. There are some
problems occur while controlling the DC Series Wound Motor, the problem is this type of motor does not provide
excellent speed control [2]. To encounter this problem, the controller is needed and, fuzzy logic controller is the best
tool in controlling the speed of the DC motor. Fuzzy Logic is based on the theory of fuzzy sets, where an objects
membership of a set is gradual rather than just member or not. Fuzzy Logic uses the whole interval of real numbers
between zero (False) and one (True) to develop logic as a basis for rule of interference enables computers to make
decisions using fuzzy reasoning rather than exact. The employment of fuzzy control is commendable for very
complex processes, when there is no simple mathematical model and for highly nonlinear processes. For acquire an
accurate of fuzzy, Fuzzy Logic Toolbox 2.1 which is one of the applications in MATLAB software is used.
Generally, in fuzzy logic system, it is most important to define the range of input and output membership function in
the fuzzy interference engine. Then, with the appropriate fuzzy rules, the accurate controlling system will be
developed for the DC motor speed control. Therefore, the speed of DC motor that used Mamdani-style fuzzy
inference system, which is composed of each one input, and output variable.

LITERATURE REVIEW
The speed of DC motors can be adjusted within wide boundaries so that this provides easy controllability and
high performance. DC motors used in many applications such as still rolling mills, electric trains, electric vehicles,
electric cranes, and robotic manipulators require speed controllers to perform their tasks. Speed controller of DC

International Conference on Engineering and Technology (IntCET 2017)

AIP Conf. Proc. 1930, 020026-1–020026-6; https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5022920
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1622-2/$30.00

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motor is carried out by means of voltage control in 1981 firstly by Ward Leonard. The regulated voltage sources
used for DC motor speed control have gained more importance after the introduction of thyristor as switching
devices in power electronics. Then semiconductor components such as MOSFET, IGBT, and GTO have been used
as electric switching devices [3]. In general, the control of system is difficult due to their high nonlinearity
properties. To overcome this difficulty, Fuzzy Logic Controller can be developed. The best applications of Fuzzy
Logic Controller are the time variant system that is nonlinear [4]. The speed response of a DC motor exposed to
fixed armature voltage was investigated for loaded operating conditions. Firstly, the DC motor was operated for a
required reference speed under loaded with no controller. Then, to make performance comparison, the speed of the
system designed for operating at fixed speed with FLC controller is simulated at MATLAB/Simulink environment.
Fuzzy logic is a type of multi valued logic. It deals with approximate reasoning rather than precise. Fuzzy logic
derived from fuzzy set theory. Fuzzy logic was first proposed by [1]. Fuzzy controller is an innovative technology
that modifies the design of systems with engineering expertise. Fuzzy logic use human knowledge to implement a
system. It is mostly use in system where there are no mathematical equations for handling system. Common sense,
human thinking and judgement are fuzzy rules. It helps engineers to solve nonlinear control problems. It
mathematically emulates human knowledge for intelligent control system and complex application. Fuzzy Logic
Controller (FLC) has some advantages compared to other classical controller such as simplicity of control, low cost,
and the possibility to design without knowing the exact mathematical model of the process [5-6]. Fuzzy logic
incorporates an alternative way of thinking which allows modelling complex systems using higher level of
abstraction originating from the knowledge and experience. Fuzzy logic can be described simply as “computing
words rather than numbers” or “control with sentence rather than equations”. There are two famous type of system
currently used in fuzzy logic which are Mamdani fuzzy inference and Sugeno fuzzy inference [7-8].

METHODOLOGY
The motor usually operates at 10 V and its speed is limited to 196.1rad/sec. This speed is enough to start any
engine and normally it also be used in any robotic application. But, in this case the reference speed (ωref) cannot be
exceeded more than 196.1rad/sec or 1872 rpm. The modeling of dc series wound motor is using the parameters as
shown in Table 1.

TABLE 1. DC series wound motor parameters

Parameters Description Value
V Voltages of DC motor (Volts) 10V
La Armature Inductance (Henry) 0.0015H
Ra Armature Resistance (Ohms) 0.5Ω
Jm Mechanical Inertia in Motor (Kg-m^2) 0.00025 Kgm2
Kb = Kv,Kt Motor Constant (N-m/A) 0.05
B Damping ratio of mechanical system (Nms) 0.0001Nms

A linear model of a simple DC motor consists of a mechanical equation, Equation (1) and electrical equation,
Equation (2) as determined in the following equations:

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 FIGURE 1. Dynamic model of DC series wound motor

In this research, 5 membership function (rules 25) was designed as fuzzy logic controller (FLC). The first step to
make a fuzzy controller (Mamdani controller), we need to define a linguistic variables use and also specify the
problem statement for this project. There are three main linguistic variables which are error (e), change in error (ce)
and also output (du).

TABLE 2. Input variable error (e)

Linguistic Value Notation Numerical Range
Negative Large NL [-450 -300 -150]
Negative Small NS [-301.5 -151.5 -1.567]
Zero Z [-150 0 150]
Positive Small PS [0 150 300]
Positive Large PL [150 300 450]

Table 2 shows the ranges of Linguistic Variable Error and its member functions. Five membership functions are
used and ranged between -300 to 300 because the maximum speed of motor is 196 rad/sec so this range is suitable
for DC motor control speed.

TABLE 3. Input variable change in error (ce)

Linguistic Value Notation Numerical Range
Negative Large NL [-0.45 -0.3 -0.15]
Negative Small NS [-0.3 -0.15 0]
Zero Z [-0.15 0 0.15]
Positive Small PS [0 0.15 0.3]
Positive Large PL [0.1485 0.2985 0.4485]

Table 3 shows the range of membership function of linguistic variable change in error and its range kept from
0.3 to -0.3.

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 TABLE 4. Input of variable output speed (du)
Linguistic Value Notation Numerical Range
Negative Large NL [-450 -300 -150]
Negative Small NS [-301.5 -151.5 -1.567]
Zero Z [-150 0 150]
Positive Small PS [0 150 300]
Positive Large PL [150 300 450]

The last linguistic variable, which is input of variable output speed is between -300 to 300. The general rules for
DC motor speed control is that if motor speed is less than desired speed, then the speed of the motor will increase
and if the motor speed is more than reference speed, then speed of the motor will decrease. In the process of
producing necessary output voltages with Fuzzy Logic Controller the speed error should be minimised. The bigger
speed error causes the bigger controller input. In addition, changing of errors plays an important role to define
controller input. In reign one, error is in positive reign while error direction is going to negative reign, so output of
controller must be positive. In this case, speed still not reaches to the reference point, so speed increasing is required
which is directly proportional to the voltage of controller. Thus, increase in voltage help the motor to achieve
reference speed. In third reign, if error value is negative large and change of error is negative large than output will
be negative large.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

For loaded scenario, from Fig. 2 it is shown that motor achieve the desired speed of 150 rad/sec in less than
0.400 s. But, by applying torque load, τL = 0.1 N.m, the speed of motor decreased and this is not desired in
industrial and robotic application. The settling time (Ts) is 0.815 s. For the overshoot (%OS), it also shows the bad
result, which is 15.43%. In order to overcome this fault, speed controller was introduced which will control the
speed of motor.

FIGURE 2. Speed, current, torque load plots of DC motor without controller at load = 0.1 Nm

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 FIGURE 3. Speed, current, torque load plots of DC motor with FLC controller at load = 0.1 Nm

Motor achieves the desired speed in less than 0.4 s. While torque load, τL =0.1 N.m is applied at 0.5 s, it did not
have any effect on the speed and it remains constant to the desired speed. This is the advantage of Fuzzy Logic
Controller (FLC) compared to a system with no controller, the speed not reduced. The reason why the overshoot
cannot be observed is, the rule base that have been set up earlier in this fuzzy block, it controls the value of speed
output for DC series wound motor that cannot be more than desired speed. The result comparison is tabulated in
Table 5. It is proven that FLC shows a great performance in terms of peak time, Tp, settling time, Ts, rise time, Tr
and also percentage overshoot, %OS.

TABLE 5. Analysis result for simulation without controller and FLC controller
Criteria Without Controller FLC
Peak Time, Tp 0.500 s 0.360s
Settling Time, Ts 0.815 s 0.380s
Rise Time, Tr 0.250 s 0.100s
Percentage Overshoot, %OS 15.43 % 0%

CONCLUSION
This paper investigates the dc motor [9-10] speed controller when FLC was implemented. This paper study
proves that fuzzy [11] logic control shows a better control of motor parameters as compared with the no controller.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research work is supported by the UPNM Short Grant (UPNM/2016/GPJP/5/TK/4).

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