In this paper, the design of a nonlinear observer-based fault diagnosis approach for polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell air-feed systems is presented, taking into account a fault scenario ...of sudden air leak in the air supply manifold. Based on a simplified nonlinear model proposed in the literature, a modified super-twisting (ST) sliding mode algorithm is employed to the observer design. The proposed ST observer can estimate not only the system states, but also the fault signal. Then, the residual signal is computed online from comparisons between the oxygen excess ratio obtained from the system model and the observer system, respectively. Equivalent output error injection using the residual signal is able to reconstruct the fault signal, which is critical in both fuel cell control design and fault detection. Finally, the proposed observer-based fault diagnosis approach is implemented on the MATLAB/Simulink environment in order to verify its effectiveness and robustness in the presence of load variation.
In this work, a novel discrete-time fractional-order sliding mode control (SMC) scheme is proposed, which guarantees the desired tracking performance of a linear motor control system. By using ...Euler’s discretization method, a discrete-time model is firstly established for the linear motor, which includes the nonlinear friction and the uncertainties. Considering the practicability of the engineering application, a new discrete-time fractional-order sliding surface is constructed by taking the Grünwald–Letnikov definition based fractional-order difference of the tracking error into account. Compared to the classical integer-order sliding surface, by the proposed fractional-order sliding surface in this work, a better performance can be achieved due to the memory effect of the fractional calculus. To drive the system trajectories to the predefined sliding surface in finite sampling steps, a novel equivalent control is then designed, which can adjust the switching control input adaptively. Meanwhile, the theoretical analysis for the tracking error of the linear motor system is presented, and the practical reachability of the sliding surface is validated by numerical simulations. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is verified by a group of tracking experiments on a linear motor platform.
In this paper, a combination of feedback linearization and disturbance observer-based control (DOBC) is adopted for the design of a state-feedback controller that regulates the velocity and altitude ...of air-breathing hypersonic vehicles (AHVs) subject to constrained inputs. First, a disturbance observer is established to estimate the overall effect of possible uncertainties and disturbances on the nominal vehicle model which is called the lumped disturbance. Then, a compensation method is proposed based on disturbance observer and feedback linearization control to counteract the mismatched lumped disturbance. Furthermore, a novel antiwindup modification is implemented on the baseline control to handle the possible input saturation. The designed controller addresses the issue of stability robustness with respect to system uncertainties and disturbances, and achieves zero-error tracking with good performance and antiwindup property meanwhile, which is the major merit compared with other existing AHV controllers. Finally, simulation is presented to verify the effectiveness of this control scheme.
This paper studies the problem of reliable filter problem for a category of sensor networks in the framework of interval type-2 fuzzy model. In the filter design, the random link failures, which are ...caused possibly by missing measurements as well as by probabilistic communication failures, are considered to illustrate more realistic dynamical behaviors of sensor networks. In order to tackle the uncertainties existing in systems, interval type-2 (IT2) fuzzy approach is utilized to establish the model, wherein upper and lower membership functions together with weighting coefficients are employed to express the uncertainties. An distributed IT2 fuzzy filter model is constructed to estimate system states. Using the Lyapunov theory, sufficient conditions have been given to ensure that the filtering error system is mean-square asymptotically stable and satisfies the predefined average \mathcal {H}_{\infty } performance level. Moreover, the criteria to design the filter parameters are developed through using cone complementary linearization approach. Finally, a practical example is given to validate the proposed method.
This paper proposes an extended state observer (ESO) based second-order sliding-mode (SOSM) control for three-phase two-level grid-connected power converters. The proposed control technique forces ...the input currents to track the desired values, which can indirectly regulate the output voltage while achieving a user-defined power factor. The presented approach has two control loops. A current control loop based on an SOSM and a dc-link voltage regulation loop which consists of an ESO plus SOSM. In this work, the load connected to the dc-link capacitor is considered as an external disturbance. An ESO is used to asymptotically reject this external disturbance. Therefore, its design is considered in the control law derivation to achieve a high performance. Theoretical analysis is given to show the closed-loop behavior of the proposed controller and experimental results are presented to validate the control algorithm under a real power converter prototype.
This paper deals with fault-tolerant output tracking control for the flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle (AHV) subject to parametric uncertainties, external disturbances, and actuator ...constraints. By regarding the flexible dynamics as equivalent disturbances, the vehicle model can be split into three functional subsystems, namely, horizontal translation subsystem, vertical translation subsystem, and rotation subsystem. Then, for each subsystem, a disturbance observer is utilized to estimate the lumped effect of model uncertainties, external disturbances, and actuator faults, while a novel auxiliary system combined with the command prefilter is constructed to handle the physical constraints on actuators. Furthermore, sliding mode control is employed to design control commands for the three subsystems, sequentially. The proposed controller modifies the reference trajectories dynamically when one or more actuators become constrained, and can steer the AHV to the desired trim finally. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed controller.
This paper presents an observer-based fault reconstruction method for PEM fuel cells. This method extends the results of a class of nonlinear uncertain systems with Lipschitz nonlinearities. An ...adaptive-gain second-order sliding mode (SOSM) observer is developed for observing the system states, where the adaptive law estimates the uncertain parameters. The inherent equivalent output error injection feature of SOSM algorithm is then used to reconstruct the fault signal. The performance of the proposed observer is validated through a hardware-in-loop emulator. The experimental results illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach for application to fuel cell air-feed systems.
Many biological tissues offer J-shaped stress-strain responses, since their microstructures exhibit a three-dimensional (3D) network construction of curvy filamentary structures that lead to a ...bending-to-stretching transition of the deformation mode under an external tension. The development of artificial 3D soft materials and device systems that can reproduce the nonlinear, anisotropic mechanical properties of biological tissues remains challenging. Here we report a class of soft 3D network materials that can offer defect-insensitive, nonlinear mechanical responses closely matched with those of biological tissues. This material system exploits a lattice configuration with different 3D topologies, where 3D helical microstructures that connect the lattice nodes serve as building blocks of the network. By tailoring geometries of helical microstructures or lattice topologies, a wide range of desired anisotropic J-shaped stress-strain curves can be achieved. Demonstrative applications of the developed conducting 3D network materials with bio-mimetic mechanical properties suggest potential uses in flexible bio-integrated devices.
This paper proposes a novel control strategy for three-level neutral-point-clamped (NPC) power converter. The proposed control scheme consists of three control loops, i.e., instantaneous power ...tracking control loop, voltage regulation loop, and voltage balancing loop. First, in the power tracking control loop, a set of adaptive sliding mode controllers are established to drive the active and reactive power tracking to their desired values via radial basis function neural network technology. In the voltage regulation loop, an efficient but simple adaptive controller is designed to regulate dc-link output voltage where the load is considered as an external disturbance. Moreover, a composite controller is developed in the voltage balancing loop to ensure imbalance voltages between two dc-link capacitors close to zero, in which a reduced-order observer is used to estimate sinusoidal disturbance improving the converter performance. The effectiveness and superiority of the proposed control strategy for the NPC power converter are compared with other control schemes through experimental results.
•The influence of tamping times on damping and stiffness of ballast bed was revealed.•The longitudinal vibration transmission attenuation of ballast bed was studied.•The correlation between the ...ballast bed resistance, damping and stiffness was studied.•The “resistance work” was used to determine the resistance variation of ballast bed.
A ballast bed provides a stable foundation and a sufficient vibration-damping performance for a railway line due to its loose and porous structure. Tamping operations change the compactness of ballast stacks and improve and maintain the state of ballast beds, which also affect the vibration-transfer characteristics and resistance performance of ballast beds. In the present study, impact excitation technology was used to test and analyze the influence of the number of tamping operations performed by a tamping car on the damping and stiffness of a ballast bed. Additionally, the influence of different tamping operations on the longitudinal vibration-transmission characteristics of the ballast bed was obtained by the methods of “single-point excitation and multi-point pick-up”. The mode of analysis of the railway structure was carried out by numerical simulation, and the resistance test on site was used to study the evolution law of the longitudinal and lateral resistance of the ballast bed during three tamping operations. The results showed that a large machine tamping operation changed the values of the two dominant resonances (140.75 Hz to 202.35 Hz and 381.25 Hz to 418.75 Hz) of track structure in the range of 0–600 Hz. The tamping operation also affected the resistance, damping, and stiffness of the ballast bed (the longitudinal and lateral resistances decreased by 17.39% and 20.34%, respectively, and the damping and stiffness increased by 204.07% and 148.80%, respectively), which suggests that the longitudinal/lateral resistances, damping, and stiffness of the ballast bed were strongly negatively correlated with one another. The modal shapes of the track structure caused by the first tamping and the second tamping were obviously different, and the positions and values of the maximum displacement changed (1.92 mm to 1.71 mm). The tamping also affected the longitudinal vibration transmission between the sleepers, and the maximum attenuation rate between adjacent sleepers was 81.25%. The change of the resistance work of the ballast bed with the displacement was more significant than the change of the resistance of the ballast bed with the displacement (when the ballast bed resistance decrement rates were 4.34%, 16.19%, and 20.34%, the track bed resistance work decrement rates were 13.14%, 28.15%, and 39.35%, respectively). Thus, the resistance work was more applicable when describing the variational degree of the stability of the ballast bed.