FACULTY OF AUTOMATION AND COMPUTER SCIENCE

Abstract of the PhD Thesis

Contributions to the Modelling, Simulation and Advanced
Control of Nonlinear Systems with Fast Dynamics, Applied in
Electromagnetic Levitation

PhD Student: eng. Adrian-Vasile DUKA
Thesis advisor: Prof.dr.eng. Mihail ABRUDEAN

Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Current State in the Field of Fuzzy Control
3. Modelling of the Electromagnetic Levitation Process
4. Modelling and Fuzzy-PD Control of the Electromagnetic Levitation System
5. Modelling and Fuzzy Model Reference Adaptive Control of the Electromagnetic
Levitation System
6. General Conclusions and Personal Contributions

Thesis outline:

The thesis contains the authors results of the fundamental and applied research in
the field of automatic control, regarding the modeling, simulation and control, based on
advanced algorithms, of nonlinear systems with fast dynamics. The studies are based on an
electromagnetic levitation plant with fast dynamics, which displays an unstable and
nonlinear character, affected by uncertainties.
The three directions followed by the author on the course of this thesis were: the
theoretical and analytical study, system modeling and simulation, as well as the
experimental study. They allowed the fundamentation of some theoretical and applied
aspects regarding: the integration of neural networks in system modeling, the design of
linear fuzzy controllers equivalent to conventional controllers, the tunning of fuzzy
parameters (scaling gains, universes of discourse, number of membership functions) and
2
their influence on the systems response, the way the linear fuzzy controller is made nonlinear
and the way it could be included in a fuzzy model reference adaptive control system.
Chapter 1 represents an introduction in the subject of the thesis and a short
description of each chapter is provided.
Chapter 2 starts with a short review of some chronological events in the history of
fuzzy systems and presents a series of achievements in this field. The theoretical aspects of
fuzzy logic for understanding fuzzy control are presented synthetically. Fuzzy sets are
introduced, as an extension of the classical notion of set, and the most widely used
membership functions are presented together with the fuzzy logic operations. The notion of
linguistic variable and the theory of approximate reasoning, which provides a framework for
reasoning in the face of imprecise and uncertain information, are also presented.
In the section dedicated to fuzzy controllers, the principles of this type of control
action are presented, and the components of a fuzzy controller are described, as well as
different ways of their implementation. The structure of the fuzzy controller used in the
follwing chapters is emphasized.
Chapter 3 is focused on the development of a mathematical model for a one degree of
freedom, attraction type, electromagnetic levitation system used for suspending in midair a
ferromagnetic object at predetermined distances. A short history and some of the ways to
achieve levitation are introduced, before starting the mathematical modeling.
Figure 1 shows the principle of electromagnetic levitation.

Figure 1. Principle of electromagnetic levitation

The dynamical model of the magnetic levitation system is described by the following
nonlinear equation:
3
( )
( ) ( )
( )
( )
2
2
2
, , , , ,

= =
t x
t i
C t x i f t x i f mg
dt
t x d
m
e e
(1)
where f
e
(i,x,t) is the electromagnetic force that counteracts the weight of the levitated ferro-
magnetic object (a steel ball in this case), x is the distance between the electromagnet and the
steel ball, i is the current through the coil, C is a nonlinear electromagnetic parameter, m is the
mass of the levitated ball, g is the gravitational constant.
The equilibrium situation, when levitation is achieved, is described by equation (2).
2
0
0

=
X
I
C mg (2)
This equation indicates the existence of several pairs of values (X
0
, I
0
) which define
different equilibrium points. The experiments, together with this equation, indicate a
nonlinear behavior of the electromagnetic parameter C.
The difficulty of fully understanding and modeling the phenomenons encountered in
the case of the electromagnetic levitation system, have led the author to the idea of
introducing a neural network, which approximated the electromagnetic parameter C, in the
model of the plant. A two-input, one-output feed-forward neural network was used for this
task, having 8 neurons in the hidden layer. The network was trained using experimental
values for X
0
, I
0
and C, which were determined when equilibrium was achieved. The
Levenberg-Marquardt training algorithm was used, which assured fast convergence of the
training error.
A Simulink model was finally developed which indicated a nonlinear dynamic plant
that was open-loop unstable and affected by parametrical uncertainties. As a result feedback
fuzzy control was proposed to stabilize the plant.
Chapter 4 introduces a design methodology for fuzzy controllers which is based on
the aspects of conventional controller design, namely on PID-type controllers.
Since fuzzy controllers are nonlinear, setting the controller parameters (gains, membership
functions etc.) can be often quite difficult and most of the time is done in an ad-hoc manner.
A fuzzy controller is nothing more than a nonlinear controller, having one or more inputs and
outputs. The shape of its nonlinear characteristic can be modeled into various shapes by
adequately choosing the different parameters in the structure of the fuzzy controller.
This is a consequence of the universal approximation theorem for fuzzy systems,
which creates the premises for the existence of a fuzzy system, which under certain
assumptions, is capable of approximating any control characteristic produced by all the
known conventional controllers, including the PID.
4
In order to determine a fuzzy controller of this type, Taylor expansion was used to
linearize the electromagnetic force f
e
(i,x,t) and a transfer function was determined for the
plant, which helped in the design of a conventional phase-lead controller. This controller
provided the starting point in the development of the fuzzy controller. A digital version of the
phase-lead controller (equation 3) was used and its PD component was replaced by a linear
fuzzy system according to the following equations.
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) 1 1
2 1 0
+ + = k e q k e q k u q k u
(3)
To show the PD component, equation (3) was rewritten as follows:
( ) ( ) ( )

+ =
+ =
T
k e k e
T k e K k u
k u k u q k u
d p
) 1 ( ) (
) ( ) (
1
0

(4)
and the PD component u(k) was replaced by a linear equivalent fuzzy system producing the
next function:
( ) ( ) ( )

+ = =
T
k e k e
T k e K k c g k e g f g k u
d p c e u
) 1 ( ) (
) ( , ) (
(5)
where g
e
, g
c
, g
u
are the fuzzy systems scaling gains which respect the following relation:
d
e
c
p e u
T
g
g
K g g
=
=

(6)
Apart from equations (6), for the equivalence in (5) to hold, the following design
choices for the fuzzy system are requiered:
- triangular input sets that cross at 50%;
- complete rule base;
- algebric product for the AND connective in the premisis;
- use output singletons, positions determined by the sum of the peak positions of the
input sets;
- center-of-gravity defuzzification.
With these design choices the control surface degenerates to a diagonal plane.
Since there are no specifications regarding the number of fuzzy sets requiered, the size
of the universe of discourse or the way the scalling gains are to be chosen, except equation
(6), a model of the closed-loop system controlled by the Fuzzy-PD linear controller was
developed in order to simulate the behavior of the system for various choices of these
parameters.
The experiments and the results provided by these simulations led to a linear structure
of the Fuzzy-PD controller, which represented the starting point for a nonlinear fuzzy
controller for the electromagnetic levitation device.
5
In the end, by introducing heuristic knowledge, about the way a human expert would
control the process, and considering the linear structure of the controller developed earlier by
analytical means, a nonlinear Fuzzy-PD controller was developed.
Its structure is presented in Figure 2.

Figure 2. The nonlinear Fuzzy-PD controller

The success with the direct fuzzy controller, applied to the magnetic levitation plant,
presented in chapter 3 is used in the design of a learning Fuzzy-PD controller. This approach
is based on the Fuzzy Model Reference Learning Control structure and is presented in
Chapter 5. The learning algorithm is based on the on-line adaptive tuning of the centers of
the output membership functions of the Fuzzy-PD system in the controller presented earlier.
Figure 3 shows the general Learning Fuzzy-PD Control structure as applied for the
positioning system based on electromagnetic levitation.

Figure 3. Learning Fuzzy-PD control structure
6
The control structure consists of four main parts: the process (plant, sensor, execution
element), the reference model, the direct Fuzzy-PD controller, and the learning mechanism
(inverse fuzzy model, rule base modifier).
The learning mechanism tries to adjust the controller parameters so that the closed
loop system (expressed through r(kT) and y(kT)) behaves as the reference model (expressed
by r(kT) and y
m
(kT)). This way, two loops are used to control the plant: the control loop
(lower) in which the controller acts by modifying the command u(kT) so that the output y(kT)
follows the reference r(kT) and the adaptation loop (upper) which makes the output of the
plant y(kT) follow the output of the reference model y
m
(kT) by adjusting the fuzzy controllers
parameters.
The reference model is chosen to generate the desired trajectory, y
m
, for the plant
output y to follow. In this case, to allow simplified computations, the output of the reference
model was considered identical to the reference.
( ) ( ) kT r kT y
m
=
(7)
An additional fuzzy system was developed called fuzzy inverse model which adjusts
the centers of the output membership functions of the Fuzzy-PD system developed earlier,
used to control the process.
The output of the inverse fuzzy model is an adaptation factor p(kT) which is used by
the rule base modifier to adjust the centers of the output membership functions of the Fuzzy-
PD system in the controller. The adaptation is stopped when p(kT) gets very small and the
changes made to the rule base are no longer significant.
The implementation of the Fuzzy Model Reference Adaptive Control system for
electromagnetic levitation is presented in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The adaptive Fuzzy-PD control system

Next some experimental results are presented. A comparative response between the
three control strategies used throughout this thesis is shown in Figure 5. For the three cases,
7
the set-point of the closed loop system corresponded to the initial linearization point (I
0
, X
0
).
Discrete phase-lead control, direct Fuzzy-PD control and Learning Fuzzy-PD control were
considered.
The changes made to the initial Fuzzy-PD linear controller (which behaved identical to
the phase lead system), by making it nonlinear, show just a little improvement in the response.
Even though, the nonlinear transformation did not reduce sufficiently enough the stationary
error, specific to PD control strategies, a dynamical change in the structure of the Fuzzy-PD
controller, introduced by the adaptive system, shows the reduction of the stationary error and
a more accurate tracking of the reference.

Figure 5. Compartive response: phase lead, direct Fuzzy-PD, adaptive Fuzzy-PD

The tracking capabilities of the system are shown in Figure 6, where a square and a
sine trajectory are considered for exemplification. The graphics show the systems ability to
position very accurately the levitated steel ball along the required trajectories, with very fast
convergence.

Figure 6. Tracking of square (a) and sine (b) trajectories
8
Chapter 5 ends with the presentation of the way the fuzzy adaptive system was
implemented by software and the programming techniques adopted in order to optimize the
execution time of the fuzzy algorithms.
Chapter 6 discusses the general conclusions of this thesis and presents the personal
contributions of the author and possible future studies. The main personal contributions
presented can be summarized as follows:
- the determination of the mathematical models for the electromagnetic levitation
system and the development of a Simulink model which uses a neural network to
approximate the electromagnetic parameter C;
- the design and implementation of a phase-lead controller for the plant, in both
continuous and discrete form;
- the design and implementation of a nonlinear Fuzzy-PD controller which uses a
nonlinear fuzzy system to replace the PD component of the conventional controller.
For this purpose the final nonlinear controller resulted as a combination of an
analytical design method for linear fuzzy controllers with heuristical methods;
- the study of the influence of the fuzzy parameters (scaling gains, universe of
discourse, number of fuzzy setes) on the response of the closed loop system
controlled by the linear Fuzzy-PD controller;
- the use of the nonlinear Fuzzy-PD controller in an adaptive control scheme;
- the modification of the FMRLC scheme, by using a reference model having the
same output as the reference, and modifying the rule base periodically at fixed
time intervals;
- a comparative study using three types of controllers for the plant;
- the development of Simulink models for all the components of the systems
introduced in this paper and their implementation in an experimental device;
- a very accurate positioning system based on electromagnetic levitation.