Development of an Adaptive Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller of an Electrohydraulic Actuator Based on a Virtual Prototyping

Abstract

The EHA (electro hydraulic actuator) has a notable advantage over conventional hydraulic actuators as it uses a closed-loop circuit, reducing the size and volume of oil, and eliminates pressure losses caused by valve orifices. However, accurate control performance of EHA is difficult to achieve using a traditional PID (proportional integral derivative) controller due to the strongly nonlinear, time-varying, and unknown dynamics of the system. Hence this paper seeks to address this problem by proposing a design of an intelligent controller for the EHA. The proposed adaptive fuzzy sliding mode controller (AFSMC) is developed as a hybrid of the adaptive, fuzzy logic, and sliding mode algorithms. To reduce costs and time, a virtual prototype approach is also proposed instead of experimentations to evaluate the performance of the proposed controller. The virtual model of the EHA is built in Amesime software, and then embedded into Matlab/Simulink where the AFSMC is developed and tested to obtain the position responses of the EHA. The results show that the AFSMC is highly successful and more efficient than the traditional PID at controlling the position of the piston accurately.