Magnetic Levitation System (MLS) objective is to levitate objects to the desired height without any contact. MLS is highly nonlinear and inherently unstable. Such a system imposes a challenge when designing robust and high-performance controllers. This paper presents the design of a Sliding Mode (SM) controller with an Integral term called SM-I controller to achieve the desired levitation against nonlinearities and uncertainties of the system. The controller parameters are tuned using the Equilibrium Optimizer (EO) algorithm. The Effectiveness of the proposed controller is validated by simulation results. Simulations are performed for servo tracking with and without perturbations in the MLS parameters. The proposed controller is compared with the conventional SM, LQR, and PID controllers to show its superiority. The results prove that the SM-I is more efficient than the other controllers.
Experimental Study of Nonlinear PID Controllers in an Air Levitation System