Active Disturbance Rejection Control for Double-Pump Direct-Driven Hydraulics
As a result of the energy crisis and further development of the electro-hydraulic actuator, double-pump direct driven hydraulics (DDH) was brought forward, which mainly comprises a servo motor, double fixed displacement pumps, a differential cylinder, a low-pressurized tank and auxiliary valves. To address the problems caused by uncertain parameters and unknown external disturbances of DDH, this paper proposed a control method adopting active disturbance rejection control (ADRC). Firstly, a mathematical model, including a DDH unit and a micro-crane, was created and modelled in MATLAB/Simulink. Further, the model was verified by measurement. After that, the state-space equation model of the system was derived based on its mathematical model and a third-order ADRC was designed using the constructed system state-space equation. Additionally, tracking-differentiator (TD) was employed to process the input signal transiently to avoid unnecessary oscillations, and the extended state observer (ESO) was used to accurately estimate the influence of the uncertainty and compensate by nonlinear feedback control law (NFCL). Moreover, the proposed ADRC or Proportional–Integral–Differential (PID) control was combined with the mathematical model of a micro-crane. Finally, the simulations were performed under varying loads, and the system position tracking performance were analyzed and compared. The results show that the ADRC can sufficiently suppress the unknown external disturbance, has the advantages of robustness, and improves the position tracking precision.