2016 IEEE/CSAA International Conference on Aircraft Utility Systems (AUS)
Modelling and Simulation of Unidirectional Proportional
Pump-Controlled Asymmetric Cylinder Position Control System
with Model Predictive Control Algorithm
Jianfeng Tao, Xuan Wang, Zhilin Xiong, and Chengliang Liu, Member, IEEE
Abstract—Unidirectional proportional pump-controlled
asymmetric cylinder systems are widely used on industry
machines, but the analysis and synthesis of such systems is very
hard due to the nonlinearity caused by the different working
areas of cylinder piston. The limit of one-way flow control ability
of the pump and the working pressure make the problem more
complex. It is very hard to find an effective method to solve this
problem with the existing theory of electro-hydraulic servo
control. To simplify the analysis and realize the no overshooting
position control, this paper presents a third order state-space
model with input and output constraints to depict the dynamic
behavior of the system. A specially designed model predictive
controller is used to guarantee that the output of the system has
no overshooting. The results of the simulation experiments show
that the proposed method can realize the high precision position
control under multiple constraints effectively.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the past ten years, due to the maturity of technology of
proportional pump [1, 2], pump-controlled asymmetric
cylinder (PCAC) system, which have excellent energy-saving
performance, are getting more and more industrial application,
such as plastic injection modeling machine [3, 4], metal
forming press machines [5-7]. Compared with the two-way
closed proportional pump-controlled system, the advantage of
unidirectional proportional pump-controlled asymmetric
cylinder lies in several aspects, such as simple circuit structure,
inexistence of flow balance problem of asymmetric cylinder,
inexistence of reversing concussion of motor and so on, so the
PCAC are continuously and increasingly concerned by
researchers.
Among all of the research topics PCAC system, position
control is an important one. So far, there are some circuit
techniques and control algorithms for PCAC systems position
* Research supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (NSFC) under grant #51375297, the Program of Shanghai Subject
Chief Scientist under grant #14XD1402000, and the National Basic
Research Program of China under grant #2013CB035403.
J. F. Tao is with the State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and
Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, Shanghai 200240, China (phone: +86-021-34206053; fax:
+86-021-34206053; e-mail: jftao@sjtu.edu.cn).
X. Wang is with the State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and
Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, Shanghai 200240, China (e-mail: xuanwang@sjtu.edu.cn).
Z. L. Xiong is with the State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and
Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, Shanghai 200240, China (e-mail: zlxiong@sjtu.edu.cn).
C. L. Liu is with the State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and
Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, Shanghai 200240, China (e-mail: chlliu@sjtu.edu.cn).
978-1-5090-1087-5/16/$31.00©2016 IEEE
408
October 10-12,2016 Beijing,China
control. For example, Perron et al. [8] proposed a
sliding-mode controller to control a power cylinder position
driven by bidirectional gear pump and compared the
performance of sliding-mode controller with that of PI
controller. Cho and Helduser [9] designed a two-pump
controlled asymmetric cylinder system for the injection
moulding clamp cylinder driving, and studied the tracking
control performance of P-controller and P-controller with
different compensating algorithms, such as velocity
feedforward, position-sliding mode, and pressure-sliding
mode. Zheng, Zhao and Wei [10] researched self-tuning fuzzy
PID controller for a SRM direct drive volume control
hydraulic press, and studied the effects of PID parameters on
control performance with simulations and experiments.
Çalişkan et al. [11] studied another two-pump controlled
asymmetric cylinder system, and a proportional controller was
adopted. All aforementioned researches paid attentions on the
regular requirements of position control, such as rapidity,
stability, accuracy and robustness. However, none of the
aforementioned control algorithms consider the system’s
input constraints and the output constraint of no overshooting,
which is especially important for some applications, such as
hydraulic press.
In this paper, a unidirectional proportional pump
controlled asymmetric cylinder system’s no overshooting
position control issue is studied. A model predictive controller
is used to guarantee that the output of the system has no
overshooting. In Section II, the schematic of the system is
described. In Section III, the mathematic model is given and
the difficulties of such systems no overshooting position
control are pointed out. In Section IV, the design principle and
steps of model predictive control is introduced. In Section V,
several simulation experiments are carried out to validate the
proposed method. Some conclusions are drawn in Section VI.
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTIONS
A. System schematic
Figure 1 shows the schematic of the studied unidirectional
proportional pump-controlled asymmetric cylinder system.
The system consists of AC servo motor 1, unidirectional
variable speed proportional pump 2, direction control valve 3,
asymmetric cylinder 4, oil tank 5, safety valve 6, pressure
sensor 7&8, controller 9, displacement sensor 10, mass block
11, spring 12 and damper 13. Figure 2 shows the test rig.
When the direction control valve is on its left position,
pump’s output flow passes through the direction control valve
with rod flows through direction valve, and returns to the oil

Figure 1. Schematic of unidirectional proportional pump-controlled
asymmetric cylinder system
Figure 2. Test rig of unidirectional proportional pump-controlled
asymmetric cylinder system
and enters cylinder’s chamber without rod; oil in the chamber
tank; then the rod of the cylinder overcomes the spring force
and damping force, and moves forward to the desired position.
Similar actions happen to the system to make the rod return to
its original position, while the valve is set to the right position.
The displacement sensor is set to monitor the rod’s position.
The controller collects displacement signals to generate the
control input of the d pump, so that the desired dynamic
performance and steady state performance are achieved. For
some applications, such as precision hydraulic press of mental
forming and powder metallurgy, the requirement of no
overshooting step response of the PCAC is important. If the
position of PCAC system has an overshooting, the pressed
mental or mental powder will not follow the cylinder’s rod to
return to the desired position. Thus, the size accuracy of the
product is lost, even if there is no error between the desired
position and the cylinder’s final position. On the other hand,
since we use a unidirectional pump to control the system’s
position, the way to pull the system from the overshooting
position to the desired position is to change the direction valve
to its another non-mid position. Then, a fast valve is required,
and this increases the component costs. In addition, the
switching of the valve also increases the model complexity of
the system, and the difficulty of system analysis and synthesis
is increased too. Considering the reasons mentioned above,
we carried out the research of PCAC system controlled by
model predictive control.
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Figure 3. Simplified hydraulic circuit for pump-controlled asymmetric
cylinder
B. System constraints
Viewed by constrained control theory, the PCAC system
studied by us has three types of constraints:
a) The pump we choose is a unidirectional variable speed
proportional pump, so its speed must be between zero and the
maximum speed, and it means that constraint of input exists
b) For some applications, such as hydraulic press,
products are usually incomplete elastomer. The final position
of the hydraulic cylinder that drive the mould cannot match
the desired size when system overshoots in controlling the
position of hydraulic cylinder. Considering the precision and
quality of products, we hope the system doesn’t overshoot,
and it means that constraint of output exists.
c) Constraint of state exists because of the highest
working pressure.
III. SYSTEM MODELING
A. Assumptions
Referring to Figure 1, we assume that: 1) the oil
temperature and the system effective bulk modulus are
constant; 2) electrically controlled pump is a speed variable
pump, and its rotary speed is proportional to the input signal; 3)
there are no line losses and dynamics; 4) pressure drops of the
direction valve is small and negligible; 5) the safety valve is
close in system’s normal operation; 6) the variation of the
cylinder chambers’ volume introduced by the piston
movement is small and negligible; 7) the initial value of
system states is zero; 8) there is a control algorithm which is
able to position the cylinder without the valve switching.
B. Mathematic model
Without loss of generality, only the case that the rode of
the cylinder runs out was studied. Then, according to the
assumption 8) in Section A, we can simplify the hydraulic
circuit as shown in Figure 3.
As shown in Figure 3, the valve is on its left position, and
the right chamber pressure p2=0, (the pressure jump on the
directional valve is neglected). Since only the pressing phase
is concerned for the special application, the unidirectional
model is built. The continuity equation for the upper chamber ª Ey Ey º ª Ey º
can be written as « K ci 0  As » « Dp K n »
« V1 V1 » « V1 »
V1 Ac « 0 0 1 » , Bc « 0 »,
q1 p1  As y  K ci p1 , (1) « » « »
Ey « As 
k

b » « 0 »
« m m m »¼ « »
where V1 is the volume of upper chamber, Ey is the system ¬ ¬ ¼
effective bulk modulus, p1 is the left chamber pressure, As is
the area of piston side without rod, Kci is the inner leakage
Cc >0 1 0@ , U min 0 , U max nmax / K n , Ymin 0,
coefficient, q1 is equal to the pump’s output flow, that is, Ymax r.

q1 Dp n. (2) IV. DESIGN OF MPC CONTROLLER

Applying Newton’s second law to the forces on the piston, According to the characteristic of studied system
we obtain the following equation mentioned above, the speed and working pressure of pump
must be in a particular range, and the system must be no
p1 As my  by  ky, (3) overshooting. Model predictive control (MPC) technology
can handle the optimization problems with constraints of input,
where m is the mass of the rod, b is the coefficient of the damp, states and output well. That make us be able to simplify the
and k is the stiffness of the spring. y is the displacement, and question to corresponding quadratic programming problem
according to requirement of no overshooting, y is subject to based on the state information and constraints of each control
horizon, and conduct rolling optimization in finite horizon to
y d r0 . (4) calculate the optional solution to keep the controller optimal
in each moment [12].
Here r0 is the desired position.
First of all, discretizing the continuous–time system based
The time constant of the servo motor is about 0.05s, which on MPC technology [12], and we can obtain
usually is far less than the system’s time constant. Hence, the
motor dynamics is ignored, yielding the rotary speed X(k  1)=A d X(k )+B d U(k ),
(8)
Y Cd X(k ).
­0 ,u  0
n ® . (5)
¯Knu , u t 0 where k is a sampling time of the system, Ad, Bd, Cd is the
coefficient matrix of the discrete-time system. Then,
Considering the maximum speed of pump, so n is subject embedding integrator to the above state-space model, we can
to obtain

0dn K n u d nmax , (6) X(k  1)=AX( k )+B'U( k ),

(9)
where u is the input of unidirectional proportional pump and Y CX(k ).
Kn is the gain. where A, B, C are corresponding augmented matrix, i.e.
Now we define the state variables x1=p1, x2=p2, x3= dy/dt ª A oTd º ª Bd º
and the vector X= [x1 x2 x3]T; U=u is input variable; Y=y is A « d »,B « » , C >od 1@ , od >0 Ă 0@.
output variable. The state-space model and constraints is ¬ Cd A d 1 ¼ ¬ Cd B d ¼
given by Establish the objective function of optimization:

min J (R s  Y)T (R s  Y)  'UT R'U

X =A c X+B c U,
Y Cc X,
U min d U d U max ,
Ymin d Y d Ymax .
where Ac, Bc and Cc is the coefficient matrix of the
continuous-time system. Substituting (1) ~ (6) to (7), we can
obtain Ac, Bc, Cc, Umax, Umin, Ymax and Ymin as follows:
s.t. U min d C1u (k i  1)  C2 'U d U m ax , (10)
(7) Y min
d Fx(k i )  Φ'U d Y m ax
.
where Rs= (1 1 ‫ ڮ‬1)T r(k), οU=(οu(ki) οu(ki+1) ‫ڮ‬
οu(ki+Nc-1))T, F= [CA CA2 CANp]T, is the set-point matrix,
r(k) is the set-point signal, οU is the control variable
incremental variation, Nc is the control horizon, Np is the
prediction horizon, R is the compensation matrix, M is a
matrix reflecting the constraints, Kis the constraints vector, ki
is a sampling time. Converting objective function and
constraints into standard form of quadratic programming, we
can obtain variable in every sampling time is known, we can

410
 Figure 4. The exected and the actual vibration signals

min 'UT (ΦT Φ  R) 'U  2(ΦT R s  Fx(k i ))

(11)
s.t. M'U d η.

ª CB 0 ˜˜˜ 0 º Figure 5. The effect of different sampling interval

« CAB CB ˜ 0 »
where Φ= « » ,
« ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ »
« N Np  Nc
»
¬«CA B CA B ˜˜˜ CA
N P 1 p 2
B ¼»
ª C2 º ª U min  C1u (k i  1) º
«C » « max »
U  C1u (k i  1) »
M « 2 », η « . If X(k), the state
« Φ » « Y min  Fx(k i ) »
« » « »
«¬ Y  Fx(k i ) »¼
max
¬ Φ ¼
obtains the optimal input sequence of k sampling time by
using a quadratic optimization algorithm called Hildreth’s
quadratic programming procedure:
T
'U (k) ª¬'u (0), 'u (1), ˜˜˜, 'u (Nc  1) º¼

and then select the first element to be the optimal input of
system:
position (0.1m) well without overshooting. Shortening the
'u(k) 'u (0).
The schematic of the control algorithm is shown in Figure
4. In Figure 4, u(k-1) and u(k) are the control output variable
at time k-1 and k, x(k+1) and x(k) are the state variables at time
k+1 and k, q-1 is the shift operator.
Figure 6. The effect of different prediction horizon
In Figure 5, we can see the system can all reach the desired
(12)
sampling interval, i.e. 0.05s, the response is faster. Since the
shorter sampling interval means shorter predictive interval
under the same prediction horizon and control horizon.
Further, a shorter predictive interval leads to a better
optimization result at every time step.

V. SIMULATION RESULTS AND ANALYSIS B. Different prediction horizon Np

Let Nc=4, Ts=0.05s, and the effect of different prediction
To verify the control effect of the MPC controller
designed in Section III, we conduct several simulations horizon is shown in Figure 6.
experiments under different control parameters to make a In Figure 6, we can see the system can all reach the desired
comparison. The parameters of system is shown as follows: position (0.1m) well without overshooting. When Np=40,
system reaches the desired position the fastest; when Np=80,
E y 1.4 u109 Pa , m 100kg , k 280kN/m , b 2N/m/s
the pressure oscillation becomes smaller, that is, the system is
V1 401cm3 , Dp 10mL/r , K n 300r/min/V , r (k) 0.1 , more stable. To a certain degree, the larger Np is, the more
13 stable the system is; the smaller Np is, the better rapidity the
Kci 2.381u10 3
m /Pa .
system has. In addition to these mentioned above, something
that must be taken into consideration is that the dimension of
A. Different sampling interval Ts matrix F, Ԅ increases as Np increases, and it will increase the
Let Nc=4, Np=40, and the effect of different sampling calculating time for the algorithm.
interval is shown in Figure 5.
C. Different control horizon Nc
Let Np=40, Ts=0.05, and the control effect of different
control horizon is shown in Figure 7

411

 influence the control effect nonlinearly. It means that we have
Figure 7. The control effect of different control horizon
Figure 8. The effect of weight parameter on the control increment.
In Figure 7, we can see the system can all reach the desired
position (0.1m) well without overshooting. As to the rapidity
of system’s response, the function of the control horizon is
contrary to that of the prediction horizon. A smaller control
horizon will increase the response rate, but not that obviously.
D. Different weights on control increment R∆u
In Figure 8, the effect of the weight parameter on the
control increment was investigated. For R∆u =0.01, the
response is the fastest while big oscillation occurs. Increasing
the weight to R∆u =0.1, the response time increases.
Meanwhile, the pressure oscillation becomes smaller.
However, when R∆u =1, the performance of the system
deteriorates seriously.
As is shown that the system output can all satisfy y൑0.1m
and ymax=0.1m. The direction control valve doesn’t need to
change the direction because the system output y always
increases until reaching the desire position, which,
undoubtedly, can avoid the negative influence of nonlinearity
caused by the different effective action areas of the
asymmetric cylinder. In addition, the reversing rotating of
motor can also be avoided.
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VI. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS
In this paper, a third order state-space model with
constraints is presented to depict the dynamic performance of
the studied speed variable proportional pump-controlled
asymmetric cylinder system and an effective model predictive
controller is designed to realize that the output of the system
has no overshooting. Compared with the traditional control
methods, model predictive control can convert the problem of
position control with the constraints of input, states and output
to a quadratic programming problem with inequality
constraints, which can be easily solved. The related
parameters of model predictive control, Nc, Np and Ts
to tune the parameters manually to achieve the best control
effect.
Because the error of the system model has effect on the
result of the control, the way to compensate the error will be
studied in the future. Another future work is to check the real
time performance of the control algorithm, and we will check
the performance by experiments.
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