EE491 Ex1; Position Control System, Wednesday group

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Introduction: The primary concept of this experiment is to study position control techniques, using linear transducers (potentiometers) in a live application. Demonstrating the effect of different values of loop gains on the entire system response. We used the B3510-J position control board, connected with a DC power supply and an Oscilloscope to measure the final position error for the reference change made at different values of loop gain. Design and analysis: First I should summarize orders of systems and their step responses to familiarize with the purpose of the experiment: 1) First order systems: The transfer function of such a system is in the form G(s) = C(s) / R(s) = 1 / (s + 1); where is the time-constant. Then we have the output can be expressed as: C(s) = (1 / (s + 1) * R(s) Concluding the unit-step response in the time-domain is the Laplace inverse of the output; we then have c(t) = 1 e ^ (-t / ) where is the time constant of the given control system. We can plot the result of the response in this figure:

2) Second order systems Although true second-order control systems are rare in practice, their analysis generally helps to form a basis for understanding of design and analysis techniques. The transfer function of a classical second-order system can be represented as

Where the damping ratio zeta follows the conditions to determine the response and the dynamic behavior of the second-order system : overdamped : underdamped : critically damped : is the undamped natural frequency When c(t) = where

: and a unit-step injected into the system gives a time-response of ,

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EE491 Ex1; Position Control System, Wednesday group

93671

The different types of responses

2 z =0.1 1.5 0.4 1 0.5 0 0 4 t/t p 8 12 0.7

Effect of the damping ratio on underdamped response

y(t)/AKp

z =1.0

1 0.8 y(t)/AKp 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0 4 t/tp 8 12 z=1 z=2 z=3

Effect of the damping ratio on overdamped response

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EE491 Ex1; Position Control System, Wednesday group

93671

The procedure of the experiment: Starting with 1 cm and increasing as we measure the following parameters: 1)The reference signal indicated as TP2. 2)The feedback signal TP1, and more importantly 3)The error signal TP3 (TP3 equals the difference between reference and feedback signals) At each indicated recording we increased the gain gradually to observe closely the consequence of adjusting the gain on the performance, especially on the error signal. Increasing the gain ( from low to Max value) we managed to minimize the error signal TP3 to values as small as 2.3 mV at P1/cm. (check table). Although there will be a tradeoff with the overshoot and undershoot of the signals when observed in MATLAB/Simulink. What we gain by decreasing the error signal we would probably lose in other parameters such as OS, and US (for instance the underdamped signal had the most Overshoot value from the simulation, more on this in a few) Table of the recordings

P1/cm
Level of gain

Reference Signal (TP2) Min Med Max

Feedback Signal (TP1) Min Mid Max

Error Signal (TP3) Min Med Max

1 cm 2 cm 3 cm 4 cm

9.3 7.11 5.18 3.12

9.45 7.39 5.13 3.01

9.24 7.22 5.33 3.02

9.30 7.63 5.7 3.63

9.42 7.38 5.09 2.98

9.16 7.16 5.28 2.991

86.6mV 0.59 0.57 0.534

57.4mV 69.3mV 7.5mV 2.7mV

2.3mV 6.4mV 4.9mV 3.9mV

* only indicated values have a unit of millivolt, otherwise its just volt.

Important remarks: 1- We observed from the movement of the motor that the effect of gain is decisive in determining the response of the system as a whole; meaning we managed to stumble upon the undamped response where the system was oscillating back and forth around the value of the position (indicating the response is a sinusoidal without an element of decay as en exponential). Demonstrating in fact a very important response. As demonstrated in the indicated figure. 2 - Its worth mentioning that the main concept of using the potentiometer is that we associate each centimeter with an amount of resistance and a given voltage. For instance a one-centimeter of position with one ohm of resistance and one unit of voltage. Thus we managed to see the position control in practice.

In the computer simulation, we managed to try different values for the damping ratio and the natural frequency in the general formula to figure out the difference between different types of responses and their responses plot. (e.g. Entering values [0 1 1] in the denominator resulted in underdamped response that is equivalent to the one in page2, entering [1 0 1] instead gave undamped response oscillating back and forth, also [1 1 1] gave overdamped response for example)

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EE491 Ex1; Position Control System, Wednesday group

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* One important final point to conclude is that even though the error signal was becoming smaller and smaller by increasing the gain of the system we still had found a trade-off between the error signal and other characteristics such as the overshoot and the time response of each signal. We can easily observe the changes in parameters such as the OS and US from trying different parameters values for the zeta and omega as designated in the MATLAB/Simulink simulation. For example we can easily determine the values from the plots designated for every separate response for example

Figure to demonstrate various performance criteria such as rise time, peak time and over/undershoot for overdamped response

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