Nonlinear control for an uncertain electromagnetic actuator

TL;DR

This paper develops a nonlinear control strategy for electromagnetic actuators that accounts for flux fringing, using uncertain modeling, backstepping, and sliding mode techniques to improve control accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel control law that explicitly considers flux fringing effects in electromagnetic actuators with an uncertain model.

Findings

Effective control law demonstrated through simulation

Flux fringing significantly impacts actuator performance

Control approach enhances robustness to uncertainties

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a nonlinear control law for a typical electromagnetic actuator system. Electromagnetic actuators are widely implemented in industrial applications, and especially as linear positioning system. In this work, we aim at taking into account a magnetic phenomenon that is usually neglected: flux fringing. This issue is addressed with an uncertain modeling approach. The proposed control law consists of two steps, a backstepping control regulates the mechanical part and a sliding mode approach controls the coil current and the magnetic force implicitly. An illustrative example shows the effectiveness of the presented approach.