REAL TIME TRACKING CONTROL OF MAGNETIC LEVITATION SYSTEM

Abstract

Electromagnetic levitation is a magical sort of phenomenon that is fascinating researchers from a very long time. It has found its use in many applications like levitation trains, launching of space missions where it is used to give space vehicles a running start to break through earth’s gravity, vibration oscillation systems and magnetic bearings. Because of inherent nonlinearities associated with the electromechanical dynamics of the system, the design of efficient control scheme to follow particular reference trajectory and disturbance suppression appears as a very challenging task for researchers. In this work, different tracking control schemes are designed and investigated for magnetic levitation system provided by Educational control products (ECP-730). This thesis work has been divided into four parts depending upon the types of control schemes designed. First part deals with the design of linear output regulation technique to follow a sine trajectory and to reject the external disturbance generated by exosystem. Second part is to design the nonlinear feedback linearizing controllers for nonlinear SISO (single input single output) maglev system. Third part of this thesis deals with the design of robust controller to follow a reference trajectory in the presence of external disturbances and model uncertainties and in final part inputoutput linearization feedback controller is designed for MIMO (multi input multi output) magnetic levitation system. All parts of thesis have been simulated in matlab simulink and the results have been compared. Finally, all the designed control schemes are implemented on real time magnetic levitation system (ECP 730 model) using ECP USR Executive software. The tracking performance of all control schemes is practically investigated for different reference trajectories and appreciable results have been achieved. At the end, a comparison of all the practically implemented control schemes is presented.