A Neural Based Position Controller for an Electrohydraulic Servo

System

AHN YILDIRIM and SELUK ERKAYA
Mechatronics Engineering Department
Erciyes University
Erciyes University, Engineering Faculty, Mechatronics Engineering Department Kayseri/Turkey
TURKEY
sahiny@erciyes.edu.tr,

BRAHM UZMAY
Mechanical Engineering Department
Erciyes University
Erciyes University, Engineering Faculty, Mechanical Engineering Department Kayseri/Turkey
TURKEY

MENDERES KALKAT

Mechanical Engineering Department
Nigde University
Engineering Faculty, Mechanical Engineering Department Nigdei/Turkey
TURKEY




Abstract: - This paper proposes a neural network based controller for controlling the position of an
electrohydraulic servo system. Feedforward network structure, which consists of an input and output layer with
one linear neuron, a hidden layer with two nonlinear neurons, is used for the related controlling, and
backpropagation algorithm (BP) is implemented for the learning process. Du to the adaptability and robustness,
the neural network based model reference adaptive control scheme gives very successful control results. The
simulation gives that the proposed adaptive neural controller has better control performance than that of the
standard PID controller. This kind of neural controllers could be utilized in experimental investigation of
electrohydraulic servo systems.


Key-Words: - Model reference control, Adaptive control, Electrohydraulic servo system, Neural networks

1 Introduction
Since the electrohydraulic systems provide large
torque and higher speed of response with fast
motion to the plant, these systems are widely used in
the industrial applications, especially in automobile
industry and heavy-duty machine. However, due to
the fluid compressibility, highly nonlinear and
parameter uncertainties, flow-pressure relationship
and internal leakage, the control of the
electrohydraulic system using well-known control
scheme is not always optimum [1]. In addition to
this, adaptive control techniques are very useful for
such systems.
A novel Variable Structure Control (VSC)
with a time-varying switching gain, a second-order
relation between sliding surface and uncertainties,
and a boundary layer for the sliding surface, has
been employed by Hwang and Lan [2] to deal with
the position control of the electrohydraulic
servomechanism which has been subjected to
parameter uncertainties and external disturbances. In
addition, the robust stability of the system has been
verified by a Lyapunov stability criterion. An
accurate and robust tracking performance of the
system has been achieved by using the proposed
approach. For the digital implementation, the
discrete existence conditions of sliding mode have
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been introduced to adapt the Integral Variable
Structure Control (IVSC) to the discrete systems by
Chuang and Shiu [3]. The system equations have
also been extended to more general forms.
Experimental results show that the discrete integral
variable structure control has the robustness to
against the parameter derivations and disturbances.
Position control of an electrohydraulic servo system
under both large inertia variations and substantial
external loads has been studied by Chin et al. [4].
Time Delay Control (TDC) has been applied to the
servo system and a stability analysis has been made.
Knohl and Unbehauen [5] have summarized the
adaptive position control of an electrohydraulic
servo system, which consists of a 4/3 way
proportional valve, a differential cylinder and a
variable load force, using artificial neural networks.
Yanada and Furuta [6] has studied online parameter
estimation of an electrohydraulic servo (EHS)
system. Natural frequency of the EHS system has
been investigated using pressure sensors based on
the equation of motion and equation of continuity,
and the estimate of the natural frequency has been
utilized to enhance the robustness of the EHS
system combined with a parallel feedforward
compensator (PFC). A non-linear model reference
adaptive control technique has been as used by
Trajkov et al. [7] for the vibration suppression of a
smart piezoelectric mechanical structure. In the
study of Herrmann et al. [8], a discrete non-linear,
adaptive neural network (NN) element has been
introduced to make the performance of a track
following controller in a hard disk drive improve for
its disturbance rejection. Davliakos and
Papadopoulos [9] have developed a novel model-
based controller for a six Degree-of-Freedom
electrohydraulic StewartGough platform. Dynamic
models of low complexity have been employed that
describe the salient dynamics of the main
electrohydraulic components. Rigid body equations
of motion and hydraulics dynamics, including
friction and servovalve models have been used.
Simulations with typical desired trajectory inputs
have been presented and a good performance of the
controller has been obtained. Yldrm [10, 11] has
proposed a recurrent neural network control system
to control a four-legged walking robot. Neural
Network (NN), which was three layers, has been
employed as an inverse controller of the robot. The
reason to use a hybrid layer was that the robots
dynamics consists of linear and nonlinear parts. The
results show that the neural-network controller can
efficiently control the prescribed positions and
trajectory of the four-legged walking robot. Milic et
al. [12] have investigated the use of the techniques
based on linear matrix inequalities for robust H
position control synthesis of an electro-hydraulic
servo system. A nonlinear dynamic model of the
hydraulic cylindrical actuator with a proportional
valve has been developed. For the purpose of the
feedback control an uncertain linearized
mathematical model of the system has been derived.
By considering the structured (parametric)
perturbations in the electro-hydraulic coefficients,
H controller extended with an integral action has
been proposed. An observer has been designed to
estimate internal states of the electro-hydraulic servo
system. Developed control algorithms have been
tested experimentally in the laboratory model of an
electro-hydraulic servo system.
The objective of the present study is to
construct a robust and adaptive neural controller for
controlling the electrohydraulic servo mechanism.


2 Theory of Electrohydraulic Servo
System
A typical position controlled electrohydraulic servo
system consists of a power supply, flow control
valve, linear actuator, displacement transducer, and
controller. The controller compares the signal from
the feedback displacement transducer with an input
demand to determine the position error, and
produces a command signal to drive the flow control
valve. The control valve adjusts the flow of
pressurized oil to move the actuator until the desired
position is obtained: a condition indicated by the
error signal falling to zero. The electrohydraulic
servo system is outlined in Fig. 1.

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Fig. 1. Schematic representation of electrohydraulic
servo system

Characteristic values of the dominant roots are also
given in Table 1.

Table 1. Dynamic parameters of electrohydraulic
servo system
Parameter Description Value

1
Natural frequency of first stage 62.8

2
Natural frequency of second stage 43.96

1
Damping ratio of first stage 0.05

2
Damping ratio of second stage 0.05

Characteristic constant value 0.02

Dynamic behaviour of the servovalve and actuator
can be expressed in the following equation,

( )
( )
( )
( )
( )
( )
( )
2 2
2 2 2
2 1 1 1
2 2 2
1 2 2 2
2 2 2
2 1 1 1 2 2 2
2
2 2
2 2 2
1 2 2 2
2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 1 2 1 1 1 2 2
2 2 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2
2 10
( ) ...
2 1
2 10 20
... cosh 1 ...
2 1
2 2 10
sinh 1 2 10 20
...
t
t
D t
e
t
e
t

+
= +
+
+ +
+
+
+ +
+ +

( )
2 2
2 2
1 1 1 2 2 2
2 2 2 2
1 2 2 2 2
2 10 20
2 1 1
t
e



| |
|
+ +
\
+

(1)

where
1
and
2
are natural frequency of first and
second stage, respectively.
1
and
2
are also
damping ratio of first and second stage,
respectively. is characteristic constant value of
system. Also, the position variation (G(s)) of the
proposed electrohydraulic servo system can be
given in transfer function form as follows,

( )
( )
( )
1
2 2 2 2
2 3
1 2 2 1 2
1 2 2 1 1 2
1
2 2 2
1 1 2 1 2
1 2
2 10
2 2
2 10
( ) 1 2
s
s
s s s
G s

+ +
+ +
= + + + + +





(2)


3 Standard Control Systems
Many simple control problems can be handled very
well by PID control, provided that the requirements
are not too high. The PID algorithm is packaged in
the form of standard regulators for process control
and is also the basis of many tailor-made control
systems. The textbook version of the algorithm can
be given in the following form [13],

0
1
( ) ( ) ( )
t
p d
i
de
u t K e t e s ds T
T dt

= + +

(3)

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where u is the control variable and e is the error
defined as e=u
d
-y, where u
d
is the desired value, and
y is the process output. Block diagram of PID
control system for position control of
electrohydraulic servo mechanism is given in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. PID Control System

The used algorithm actually comprises several
modifications. It is standard practice to let the
derivative action operate only on the process output.
It may be advantageous to let the proportional part
act only on a fraction of the desired value. The
derivative action is replaced by an approximation
that reduces the gain at high frequencies. The
integral action is modified so that it does not keep
integrating when the control variable saturates.
Precautions are also taken so that there will not be
transients when the regulator is switched from
manual to automatic control or when parameters are
changed. The essential parameters to be adjusted are
Proportional term (K
p
), Integral time (T
i
) and
Derivative time (T
d
). The tracking time constant is
typically s fraction of the integration time T
i
.


4 Model Reference Neural Control
(MRNC) System
Neural network (NN) is a parallel distributed
information processing system. This system is
composed of operators interconnected via one-way
signal flow channels. NN stores the samples with a
distributed coding, thus forming a trainable non-
linear system. It includes hidden layers between the
inputs and outputs. The main idea of the NN
approach resembles the human brain functioning.
Therefore, NN has a quicker response and higher
performance than a sequential digital computer.
Many NN models use threshold units with tangent
hyperbolic activation function and gradient descent
learning algorithm.
The MRNC is an adaptive control approach
in which the desired performance is given in terms
of a reference model which is chosen based on some
prior information concerning the plant (system). The
reference model gives the desired response to a
command signal. Block diagram of the proposed
controller is described in Fig. 3.

Q
d
(s)

Q
a
(s)

Actual
Flow rate
Desired
Flow rate
PID Controller
+
-
+
+
+
Control
Input

e
u
d


y
Electrohydraulic
Servo System
1
d
T s

1
i
Ts



p
K
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Fig. 3. Proposed model reference neural control system

The MRNC scheme has two neural networks; one is
to work as the controller network while the other
works as the plant identifier network. The system
also has an ordinary feedback loop composed of the
process and the controller and another feedback
loop that changes the controller parameters. The
parameters are changed on the basis of feedback
from the control errors (e
c
) between the system
outputs and reference model outputs [14].
One important question is how small we can
make the error e
c
. This depends both on the model,
the system, and the command signal. If it is possible
to make the error equal to zero for all command
signals, the perfect model is achieved for optimal
control [15]. Reference model of the system for
MRNC is selected in the following form,

2 , 664 643 , 5
400 64 , 0
) (
2
2
+ +
+ +
=
s s
s s
s G

(19)

5 Simulation Results
Some simulations are carried out on the MATLAB
software to demonstrate the adaptability and
robustness of MRNC scheme and performed on a
PIV processor with a CPU speed of 3.2MHz and
1024Mb Ram. [16]. Simulations are divided in two
subsections. In the first subsection, the results of
standard PID controller are given and analyzed. In
the second subsection, the results of MRNC scheme
are analyzed.


5.1 Simulation I
In this section, standard PID controller is used to
control the electrohydraulic servo system. The gain
parameters (K
p
, T
i
, and T
d
) are empirically selected.
These parameters are set to K
p
=50, T
i
=25 and
T
d
=10. The results of standard PID controller are
given in Fig. 4.



Control
Input (uc) Q
a
(s)
Actual
Flow rate
Q
d
(s)
Desired
Flow rate
Control Error (ec)
+
-
+
-
u
r

y
s

e
s

Model Error (e
m
)
-
+
Electrohydraulic
Servo System
NN Plant
Model
Prediction
NN
Controller
Reference
Model
wjk
Input
Layer
Output
Layer
.
.
.
.
.
yNN NN
c
u
Hidden Layer

wij
wjk wij
es
Input
Layer
Output
Layer
.
.
.
.
.
Hidden Layer

NN
c
u
: Nonlinear neuron : Linear neuron
:Feedforward connection

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Fig. 4. System response with PID controller

As shown, the deviations between input and output
values are very high. Therefore, the obtained result
for this case is not acceptable.


5.2 Simulation II
The proposed MRNC scheme is designed by using a
feedforward neural network. The weight parameters
of the neural network are adjusted by using BP
learning algorithm. Numbers of hidden elements in
nonlinear parts of the neural network are set to two,
and the activation functions are selected as
hyperbolic tangent type. Fig. 5 shows flow rate
variations as an input to the system, amplitude as a
response of the hydraulic system, amplitude error
variations as a NN model errors and amplitude as a
NN system responses.

0 10 20 30 40 50
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
Hydraulic System Input
Time (s)
F
l
o
w


r
a
t
e

(
m
3
/
s
)
0 10 20 30 40 50
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
Hydraulic System Output
Time (s)
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e

(
m
m
)
0 10 20 30 40 50
-0.2
-0.1
0
0.1
0.2
NN Model Error
Time (s)
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e

(
m
m
)
0 10 20 30 40 50
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
NN System Output
Time (s)
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e

(
m
m
)

Fig. 5. Variations MRNC for system input, System response, error and NN output

Training and testing data RMSE variations are given
in Fig. 6. Results of reference model response and
system output are also outlined in Fig. 7.


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Fig. 6. Error measure of neural system using mean square error

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
Time (s)
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e

(
m
m
)
Reference Model Output System Output

Fig. 7. Reference model and system response

6 Conclusion and Discussion
In this study, a model reference neural position
controller using neural networks for an
electrohydraulic servo valve system is proposed.
From the simulation results, it is seen that the model
reference adaptive control system with a
feedforward neural controller produces the best
performance while the PID control system yields
poor control. A reason for strong performance of
neural based MRAC system is the fast learning and
robustness of the neural network. This facilitates the
training of the neural controller, and the nonlinear
neurons could readily learn the linear part of the
electrohydraulic servo system. The results show that
the model reference neural controller has a superior
performance than that of the conventional PID
controller for controlling the position of an
electrohydraulic servo system. In the next study, the
optimal number of the nonlinear neuron in hidden
layer will be determined to decrease the position
error for the proposed control structure.

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Wiley, New York, 1976.
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ISBN: 978-960-474-283-7 37

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