A self-tuning fuzzy PID-type controller design for unbalance compensation

in an active magnetic bearing

Kuan-Yu Chen
b
, Pi-Cheng Tung
a,
*
, Mong-Tao Tsai
a
, Yi-Hua Fan
b
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Central University, Jhongli City, Taoyuan County 32001, Taiwan, ROC
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chung Yuan Christian University, Jhongli City, Taoyuan County 32023, Taiwan, ROC
a r t i c l e i n f o
Keywords:
Fuzzy PID-type controller
Self-tuning mechanism
Active magnetic bearing
Unbalanced force observer
a b s t r a c t
This paper presents a design for a fuzzy gain tuning mechanism dealing with the problem of unbalanced
vibration problem in an active magnetic bearing (AMB) system. For the purpose of enhancing the perfor-
mance of the AMB system, we replace the conventional proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller
with a self-tuning fuzzy PID-type controller (FPIDC). The shaft displacement and the unbalanced forces of
the rotor are evaluated by model-based observation. If there are model uncertainties in the rotor system
or nonlinearities in the magnetic bearing system, this observer may not work well at any operating speed.
A fuzzy gain tuner is added to adjust the actuating signal of the self-tuning FPIDC in order to overcome
the disturbances and suppress the unbalancing vibration. The experimental results show that the pro-
posed scheme allows for a remarkable improvement in reducing vibration in an unbalanced AMB system
as well as demonstrate an efcient reduction in the shaft displacement of the rotor.
2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Interest in the industry in active magnetic bearings (AMBs) con-
tinues to grow. AMBs offer some important advantages over con-
ventional ball or roller bearings, such as no contact between
bearings, and consequently, no need for lubricants, which makes
them very useful in special high temperature or vacuum environ-
ments. However, it is difcult to design active controls for mag-
netic bearing systems because of their high nonlinearity and
open-loop unstable electromagnetic dynamics. In recent years,
several nonlinear control techniques have been proposed (Behal,
Costic, Dawson, & Fang, 2001; Lvine, Lottin, & Ponsart, 1996; Que-
iroz & Dawson, 1996) for AMB systems including sliding mode
(Torres, Sira-Ramirez, & Escobar, 1999), feedback linearization
(Smith & Weldon, 1995), and hybrid control (Al-Holou, Lahdhiri,
Joo, Weaver, & Al-Abbas, 2002), all designed to improve their dis-
turbance rejection properties and robustness in terms of unmod-
eled dynamics and parameter uncertainties. The characteristic of
the sliding mode control is its robustness or insensitivity to mod-
eling errors and disturbances. In practical systems, however, it is
difcult to achieve the fast switching control that is generally re-
quired to implement most sliding mode control designs. The draw-
back of feedback linearization is that it is necessary to know the
whole state of a nonlinear system before the controller is designed.
For real systems, this is often a great hindrance, as many of the
states cannot be effectively measured. Feedback linearization is
also sensitive to modeling errors that result from the fact that an
exact model of a nonlinear system is generally not available.
There is one further problem with rotor unbalancing in an AMB
system that we must not ignore, that is it appears as synchronous
rotor displacement as well as synchronous transmitted force. Var-
ious methods to solve the problem of unbalanced vibration have
been discussed. Chen and Lewis (1992) combined an acceleration
estimator with a proportional-derivative (PD) controller to sup-
press the vibration caused by unbalanced forces. Higuchi, Otsuka,
& Mizuno (1992) proposed a periodic learning control which uti-
lized the period of oscillation and the characteristics of the system
to identify the unbalancing force and reduce the vibration. Model-
based controllers are also sometimes used in AMBs, although a
reliable model is not always known for all operating conditions
(Higuchi, Mizumo, & Tsukamoto, 1990; Matsumura, Fujita, & Oka-
wa, 1990). Methods including acceleration estimator and model-
based observer designs are frequency dependent. Lum, Coppola,
and Bernstein (1996) proposed an adaptive autocentering ap-
proach that was frequency independent, and compensated for
transmitted forces that occurred due to unbalance in an AMB sys-
tem. They showed that the adaptive autocentering control objec-
tive is equivalent to the attenuation of synchronous rotor
vibration caused by mass unbalance.
In this paper, we describe a fuzzy PID-type controller (FPIDC)
that operates via the parameters self-tuning method, to help
0957-4174/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2008.10.055
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: t331166@ncu.edu.tw (P.-C. Tung).
Expert Systems with Applications 36 (2009) 85608570
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j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er . com/ l ocat e/ eswa
compensate for magnetic nonlinearity and reduce unbalanced
vibration. Fuzzy logic controllers (FLCs) may be viewed as a non-
conventional way to design feedback controllers in cases where
it is convenient and effective to build a control algorithm without
relying on a precise mathematical model of the controlled system.
The fuzzy control law can be designed conveniently, after research-
ing the relationship between input and output of the system. In re-
cent years, there have been a number of reports on the successful
use of FLCs for AMB systems. Hung (1995) designed a nonlinear
controller for a dual-acting magnetic bearing. Fuzzy reasoning
was used to adjust the output of a linear proportional-integral-
derivative (PID) controller only when the plant state and input
were far from the point of equilibrium. Hong and Langari (2000)
proposed a fuzzy logic control scheme for an AMB system sub-
jected to harmonic disturbances, where the AMB system was rep-
resented by means of a TakagiSugenoKang fuzzy model.
Fuzzy control is often viewed as a form of nonlinear PID con-
trol because it provides nonlinear input/output mapping. Hence,
the majority of fuzzy control applications are classied as FPIDCs.
FPIDCs poses the potential to achieve better system performance
over conventional PID controllers, but in nonlinear systems the
use of only static or xed valued scaling factors (SFs) may not
be sufcient to provide optimal performance and robustness in
the face of both process disturbances and modeling errors. Most
real processes actually consist of nonlinear high-order systems
and may have considerable dead-time. Sometimes parameters
may change randomly with time or with changes in the ambient
environment. To overcome these drawbacks, a lot of research has
been focused on the tuning of the input/output SFs of FPIDCs via
on-line self-tuning schemes. Chung, Chen, & Lin (1998) developed
a method for the self-tuning of both the input and output SFs of a
PI-type fuzzy controller via a fuzzy tuner. Mudi and Pal (1999)
proposed a robust self-tuning scheme for the output SFs of fuzzy
PI- and PD-type controllers, considered equivalent to the control-
ler gain. Here, the output SF is modied at each sampling time by
a gain updating factor, which is dependent on the trend of the
output of the control process. The gain updating factor is com-
puted on-line using a model independent fuzzy rule base dened
in terms of error (e) and change of error (De). This self-tuning
fuzzy PI- and PD-type controller scheme shows a remarkably im-
proved performance over conventional FLCs without this gain
tuning mechanism. Woo, Chung, and Lin (2000) presented an-
other parameter adaptive method which used a function tuner.
They dened two empirical functions with respect to the error
signal (e(t)). These were used to adjust the input SF (K
d
) for e
and the integral constant (b) of the FPIDC, to reduce the oscilla-
tion and shorten the settling time of the system. Gzelkaya, Ek-
sin, and Yes il (2003) developed a parameter adaptive method
to adjust the K
d
and b of an FPIDC using an on-line fuzzy infer-
ence mechanism. The fuzzy inference mechanism used to adjust
the related coefcients has two inputs, one of which is called
the system error, the other normalized acceleration. The normal-
ized acceleration gives relative rate information regarding the
fastness or slowness of the system response. The mechanism that
provides this information can be interpreted as a relative rate ob-
server. The simulation results in Gzelkaya et al. (2003) clearly
demonstrate the efciency of this system compared to other re-
lated a lesser number of parameters must be tuned, and they
are methods. This is because that is more robust relative to the
system parameters or structural changes must be tuned.
In this study, we proposed an effective method for tuning the
coefcients of an FPIDC used for controlling an AMB system. A sys-
tem built for experimental purposes provide evidence at the supe-
rior performance over that at a conventional PID control system.
Furthermore, we use a fuzzy gain tuning mechanism to deal with
the problem of the unbalanced vibration in an AMB system. We
rst consider the uncertainties of the magnetic parameters. We de-
sign a model-based observer to evaluate the shaft displacement
and unbalanced forces of the rotor. The hysteresis phenomenon
and magnetic leakage arising from magnetic ux density and mag-
netic eld intensity make the forces acting on the magnetic bearing
to be nonlinear. This means that an observer designed based on the
nominal dynamic characteristics of the rotor, will not work well for
the entire operating range. Thus, we propose a model-based fuzzy
unbalance estimator to overcome estimation errors caused by
parameters and modelling uncertainties. The effectiveness of the
new model-based unbalance compensator with a fuzzy gain tuning
mechanism for AMB systems is compared experimentally with that
of a self-tuning FPIDC.
The remainder of this paper can be summarized as follows. In
Section 2 we discuss the two-input FPIDC structures and parame-
ter adaptive mechanisms. In Section 3 we discuss the modeling of
the AMB system, the basic analysis of the proposed model-based
observer, and the structure of the fuzzy gain tuning mechanism. Fi-
nally, the experimental setup and results are discussed, and some
conclusions are provided in Sections 4 and 5.
2. Self-tuning fuzzy PID-type controller
2.1. Fuzzy PID-type controller with a parallel structure
Qiao and Mizumoto (1996) described a FPIDC structure where
the fuzzy PD- and PI-type controllers are simply connected to-
gether in parallel, as shown in Fig. 1a. They utilized the product
sum inference method, center of gravity defuzzication method,
and triangular uniformly distributed membership functions (MFs)
for the inputs and a crisp output to design the FPIDC. The output
of the FPIDC can be given by
u u
PD
u
PI
aU b
_
Udt
aA PK
e
e DK
d
_ e b
_
A PK
e
e DK
d
_ edt
aA bAt aK
e
P bK
d
De bK
e
P
_
edt aK
d
D_ e;
1
where aK
e
P + bK
d
D, bK
e
P, and aK
d
D are the equivalent proportional,
integral, and derivative gains, respectively. The relation between
the input and output variables of the FPIDC in (1) is given by
U = A + PE + DDE, where E = K
e
e and DE = K
d
e . Here K
e
and K
d
are
the SFs for the input variables e and e , respectively, and b is the inte-
gral constant for the output variable U.

0.5 0 -0.5 1
NB
1
-1
NM PM PB ZE
FLC
Derivative
Estimator
+
+

+
-
FPIDC
+
+
a
b
Fig. 1. (a) Closed-loop control structure of the FPIDC; (b) MFs for E and DE.
K.-Y. Chen et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 36 (2009) 85608570 8561
The MFs for the scaled error E and derivative of DE error are
shown in Fig. 1b, where the fuzzy variables labeled: NB, NM,
ZE, PM, and PB, represent negative big, negative medium,
zero, positive medium, and positive big, respectively. The
fuzzy control rules for computing U are given in Table 1.
2.2. Self-tuning method for the FPIDC
Gzelkaya et al. (2003) developed a fuzzy parameter regulator
for tuning the input and out put SFs K
d
and b of the FPIDC. The fuz-
zy parameter regulator has two inputs: one of which is the abso-
lute value of error (jej) and the other one is the normalized
acceleration (r
m
). The output variable of the fuzzy parameter regu-
lator is designated c. The normalized acceleration r
m
(k) is dened as
r
m
k K
rm
dek dek 1
de
K
rm
ddek
de
; 2
where de(k) is the incremental change in error given by
de(k) = e(k) e(k 1), dde(k) is the acceleration in error given by
dde(k) = de(k) de(k 1), and K
rm
is the SF for r
m
(k). In (2), de() is
the maximum change between de(k) and the previous value
de(k 1), designated as follows:
de
dek; jdekj Pjdek 1j
dek 1 jdekj < jdek 1j
_
3
Here K
d
and b are adjusted by multiplying and dividing its predeter-
mined value by c, as shown below:
K
d
K
ds
K
fd
K
f
c; 4
and
b
b
s
K
f
c
0
5
where K
ds
and b
s
are the initial values of K
d
and b, K
f
is the SF for the
output of the fuzzy parameter regulator, and K
fd
is the additional
parameter that affects only K
d
. A block diagram of the controller
structure is shown in Fig. 2a. The MFs for the input variables r
m
and jej, and the output variable c chosen are symmetrical triangular
uniformly distributed functions, as shown in Fig. 2b and c, where
the fuzzy variables for jejand c are S, SM, M, and L, represent
small, small medium, medium, and large, respectively, and
the fuzzy variables for r
m
are S, M, and F, representing slow,
moderate, and fast, respectively. Table 2 shows the fuzzy con-
trol rules for the computation of the output variable c.
3. Modeling of the AMB system with unbalance compensation
3.1. Modeling of the AMB system
The basic structure of the horizontal rotor system used in this
study is shown in Fig. 3. The rotor is suspended by an electric mag-
netic bearing (EMB) on the free end. The other end is connected to
an inductive motor by a exible coupling. Two position sensors to
measure the shaft displacement in both the horizontal and vertical
directions are installed at the free end of the rotor.
The relations between the position of the coupling, magnetic
bearing, and the center of mass of the rotor are shown in Fig. 4,
where O is the mass center of the rotor; and F
1
F
4
denote the four
Table 1
TakagiSugeno type fuzzy rule base for the computation of U.
E
NB NM ZE PM PB
DE NB 1 0.7 0.5 0.3 0
NM 0.7 0.4 0.2 0 0.3
ZE 0.5 0.2 0 0.2 0.5
PM 0.3 0 0.2 0.4 0.7
PB 0 0.3 0.5 0.7 1



0.667
0.333 1 0
SM M L S
1
0 1
S
1
-1
F M
FLC
+
+
+
-


FPIDC
+
+
Relative rate observer
+
-
FPR
Fuzzy tuner
+
-
a
b
c
Fig. 2. (a) Block diagram of the relative rate observer FPIDC; (b) MFs for r
m
; (c) MFs
for jej and c.
Table 2
Fuzzy rule base for the computation of c.
r
y
S M F
jej S M M L
SM SM M L
M S SM M
L S S SM
2
1
4
3 Motor
Platform
Magnetic bearing
Mass
Sensor
Back-up bearing Flexible coupling
Fig. 3. Basic structure of the AMB system.
8562 K.-Y. Chen et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 36 (2009) 85608570
attractive magnetic forces in the x and y directions. The rotor is as-
sumed to be rigid and symmetrical with uniform mass unbalance.
The dynamic equations describing the movement at the rotor bear-
ing system about the mass center are
F
x
mx m
p
rX
2
cosXt h F
x
1 F
1
F
3
;
F
y
m y m
p
rX
2
sinXt h mg F
y1
F
2
F
4
;
M
y
I

h
y
XI
p
_
h
x
dm
p
rX
2
cosXt h aF
x1
bF
1
F
3
;
M
x
I

h
x
XI
p
_
h
y
dm
p
rX
2
sinXt h aF
y1
bF
2
F
4
;
6
where m is the mass of the rotating shaft; m
p
is the mass unbalance
at the rotating disk; h is the initial angle of the unbalanced mass
measured from the X axis; X is the speed of rotation around the
spinning Z axis; x, y, h
x
, and h
y
are the radial and rotating displace-
ments of the mass center, respectively; I and I
p
are the transverse
and polar mass moments of inertia of the rotor; F
x1
and F
y1
are
the coupling forces; x
1
and y
1
are the shaft displacements corre-
sponding to the X and Y axes at the exible coupling; and x
2
and
y
2
are the shaft displacements at the magnetic bearing.
According to Tadeoand Cavalca (2003) and neglecting the effect
of rotation, the exible coupling forces corresponding to the X and
Y axes can be expressed as follows:
F
x1
c
T
_ x
1
k
T
x
1
;
F
y1
c
T
_ y
1
k
T
y
1
;
7
where c
T
is the equivalent damping; and k
T
is the equivalent stiff-
ness of the coupling.
The magnetic forces provided by the EMB are functions of the
width of the magnetic gap and the current driving the electromag-
nets (Hsiao, Fan, Chieng, & Lee, 1996). Thus, the four magnetic
forces can be written as a function of the driving currents and vari-
ations in the magnetic gap,
F
n
f
0
k
i
i
n
k
d
d
n
f i
n
; d
n
; n 1; 2; . . . ; 4; 8
where f
0
is the static magnetic force when the driving current is
i
n
= 0 and the magnetic gap variation is d
n
= 0; k
d
and k
i
are the
forcedisplacement stiffness factor and the forcecurrent stiffness
factor; and f(i
n
,d
n
) is a high-order term for the magnetic forces
due to the coil currents and magnetic gap variations.
Let the four electromagnets have the same static magnetic force
f
0
and the same coefcients k
a
and k
i
; the four magnetic forces F
1

F
4
can now be rewritten as
F
1
F
3
k
i
i
1
k
d
x
2
f i
1
; x
2
;
F
2
F
4
k
i
i
2
k
d
y
2
f i
2
; y
2
:
9
For simplicity, the system equations for the designed controller
indicate displacements in the locations of the exible coupling
and magnetic bearing. Since the rotor is assumed to be rigid and
the displacement from the desired position is assumed to be small,
the relationships between the shaft positions (x
1
, x
2
, y
1
, y
2
) and the
mass center (x, y, h
x
, h
y
) can be shown as
x
bx
1
ax
2
a b

bx
1
ax
2
L
;
y
by
1
ay
2
a b

by
1
ay
2
L
;
h
x

y
1
y
2
a b

y
1
y
2
L
;
h
y

x
2
x
1
a b

x
2
x
1
L
;
10
where a is the distance between the exible coupling and the mass
center; b is the distance between the magnetic bearing and the
mass center; and L = a + b.
The dynamics of the system can be rearranged in matrix form as
follows:
1 0 0 0
0 1 0 0
0 0 1 0
0 0 0 1
_

_
_

_
x
1
x
2
y
1
y
2
_

_
_

c
T
b
3
0 a
1
a
1
c
T
b
2
0 a
2
a
2
a
1
a
1
c
T
b
3
0
a
2
a
2
c
T
b
2
0
_

_
_

_
_ x
1
_ x
2
_ y
1
_ y
2
_

_
_

k
T
b
3
k
d
b
2
0 0
k
T
b
2
k
d
b
1
0 0
0 0 k
T
b
3
k
d
b
2
0 0 k
T
b
2
k
d
b
1
_

_
_

_
x
1
x
2
y
1
y
2
_

_
_

k
i
b
2
0
k
i
b
1
0
0 k
i
b
2
0 k
i
b
1
_

_
_

_
i
1
i
2
_ _

c
2
0 b
2
0
c
1
0 b
1
0
0 c
2
0 b
2
0 c
1
0 b
1
_

_
_

m
p
rX
2
cosXt h
m
p
rX
2
sinXt h
f i
1
; x
2

f i
2
; y
2

_
_

0
0
1
1
_

_
_

_
g;
11a
where a
1

IpXa
IL
, a
2

IpXb
IL
, b
1

b
2
1

1
m
, b
2

ab
1

1
m
, b
3

a
2
1

1
m
, c
1

bd
1

1
m
; and c
2

ad
1

1
m
. Eq. (11a) can be expressed as
Mx C_ x Kx Bu Ew Dg; 11b
where x = [x
1
x
2
y
1
y
2
]
T
is the state vector; u = [i
1
i
2
]
T
is the input
vector; and w = [m
p
rX
2
cos(Xt + h) m
p
rX
2
sin(Xt + h)f(i
1
,x
2
)f(i
2
,x
2
)]
T
is the vector of the disturbance forces.
3.2. Model-based unbalanced forces observer
Here, we describe a decentralized force estimator for compen-
sating disturbance forces. Considering Eq. (11a), the dynamics of
the suspended magnetic part can be rearranged as follows:
1 0
0 1
_ _
x
2
y
2
_ _

k
d
b
1
0
0 k
d
b
1
_ _
x
2
y
2
_ _

k
i
b
1
0
0 k
i
b
1
_ _
i
1
i
2
_ _

dx
2
dy
2
_ _
;
12
where dx
2
and dy
2
are the sum of the disturbance forces, including
unbalanced forces, force of gravity, coupling forces, and gyroscopic
forces for both the x and y directions.
2
3
4
1
Fig. 4. Geometry relationship of the rotor system.
K.-Y. Chen et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 36 (2009) 85608570 8563
Self-Tuning
FPIDC
Magnetic Bearing
System
+
-
Unbalanced Force
Observer
Fuzzy
Inference
System erivative
Estimator
Fuzzy Gain Tuning Mech
Model-Based Unbalance Compensator
Fig. 5. Control structure of the AMB system with the model-based unbalance compensator.
0.5 0 -0.5 1
NB
1
-1
NS PS PB ZE

Fig. 6. Membership functions of Y
2
and DY
2
.
air gap, g
electromagnet
+ i0 iy
i0 x + i
f
x
x
i i -
0 y
i - i
f
y
shaft
rotor
0 x
y
a
b
Fig. 7. (a) End view of the magnetic bearing; (b) photograph of the experimental setup.
Table 3
TakagiSugeno type fuzzy rule base for the computation of a.
Y
2
NB NS ZE PS PB
DY
2
NB 1 0.7 0.5 0.3 0
NS 0.7 0.4 0.2 0 0.3
ZE 0.5 0.2 0 0.2 0.5
PS 0.3 0 0.2 0.4 0.7
PB 0 0.3 0.5 0.7 1
8564 K.-Y. Chen et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 36 (2009) 85608570
The sum of disturbance forces can be expressed as
dx
2
c
1
m
p
rX
2
cosXt h c
T
b
2
_ x
1
a
2
_ y
1
k
T
b
2
x
1
a
2
_ y
2
;
dy
2
c
1
m
p
rX
2
sinXt h a
2
_ x
1
c
T
b
2
_ y
1
k
T
b
2
y
1
a
2
_ y
2
g:
13
It is obvious from Eq. (12) that the system can be separated into two
similar sub-systems. Hence, we design a force estimator y
2
for that
is also suitable for x
2
.
The dynamic equation of y
2
can be expressed as
_ y
2
y
2
_ _

0 1
k
d
b
1
0
_ _
y
2
_ y
2
_ _

0
k
i
b
1
_ _
i
2

0
1
_ _
dy
2


Ay
2


Bi
2


Ddy
2
;
y
y2
g
s
0
y
2
_ y
2
_ _


Cy
2
;
14
Fig. 8. Shaft displacements on the Y axis and orbits of the rotor center for the PID controller: (a) 10 Hz; (b) 20 Hz; (c) 30 Hz; (d) 40 Hz; (e) 50 Hz; (f) 60 Hz; (g) 70 Hz; (h)
80 Hz.
K.-Y. Chen et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 36 (2009) 85608570 8565
where y
2
y
2
_ y
2

T
and g
s
is the gain of the position sensor. We
can calculate the rank of the observable matrix by
rankV rank

A
_ _ _ _
rank
g
s
0
0 g
s
_ _ _ _
2: 15
The system is thus a fully observable system. The Luenberger state
estimator can be written as
_
^ y
2
y
2
_ _

0 1
k
d
b
1
0
_ _
^ y
2
_
^ y
2
_ _

0
k
i
b
1
_ _
i
2

l
1
l
2
_ _
y
y2
^ y
y2

A^ y
2


Bi
2


Ly
y2
^ y
y2
;
^ y
y2
g
s
0
^ y
2
_
^ y
2
_ _


C ^ y
2
:
16
Fig. 9. Shaft displacements on the Y axis and orbits of the rotor center obtained using the self-tuning FPIDC: (a) 10 Hz; (b) 20 Hz; (c) 30 Hz; (d) 40 Hz; (e) 50 Hz; (f) 60 Hz; (g)
70 Hz; (h) 80 Hz.
8566 K.-Y. Chen et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 36 (2009) 85608570
If there is no disturbance term dy
2
, the Luenberger observer makes
the observed error decay to zero. In other words, we can stabilize
the estimated system and make the observed displacement and
velocity of the rotor approach that of a real systemvia suitable gains
of

L. Hence, the disturbance term exists all the time. The observed
error is affected by the disturbance term of dy
2
, leading to variation
in the estimated output. In other words, the variation in the ob-
served output is a measurement criterion for the disturbance force
dy
2
. Thus if we set the error integral term d^ y
2
to be
d^ y
2
g
s
l
d
_
y
2
^ y
2
dt; 17
then insert this into the Luenberger observer. The observer can now
be rewritten as
_
^ y
2

^ y
2
d
_
^ y
2
_

_
_

_

0 1 1
k
d
b
1
0 1
0 0 0
_

_
_

_
^ y
2
_
^ y
2
d^ y
2
_

_
_

_
0
k
i
b
1
0
_

_
_

_i
2

l
1
l
2
l
3
_

_
_

_y
y2
^ y
y2
;
^ y
y2
g
s
0 0
^ y
2
_
^ y
2
d^ y
2
_

_
_

_:
18
The dynamic equation for the error can now be expressed as
_ e
g
s
l
1
1 0
g
s
l
2
k
d
b
1
0 1
g
s
l
d
0 0
_

_
_

_e
0
0
1
_

_
_

_d_ y
2
; 19
where _ e e
y2
_ e
y2
dy
2
d^ y
2

T
and e
y2
= y
2
y
2
.
The characteristic equation for Eq. (19) is
s
3
g
s
l
1
s
2
g
s
l
2
k
d
b
1
s g
s
l
d
0: 20
According to the RouthHurwitz stability criterion, the stability
conditions are
g
s
l
1
> 0;
g
s
l
2
k
d
b
1
> 0;
g
s
l
1
g
s
l
2
k
d
b
1
> g
s
l
d
> 0:
21
Hence, suitable gains can be selected utilizing Eq. (21) to make the
observer stable. We can also design an observer for x
2
that makes
both observers stable and provides feedback to the system.
However, if there are some model uncertainties in the rotor sys-
tem or nonlinearities in the magnetic bearing system, this observer
will not work well at any operating speed. The lag and the ampli-
tude of the phase of the estimated force signal may differ for exact
disturbances. The estimated forces of disturbance increase with the
rotating speed. Hence, in this study, the fuzzy gain tuning mecha-
nism is used to help compensate for magnetic nonlinearities and
improve system performance.
3.3. Fuzzy tuning method for the unbalanced forces observer
Unlike conventional types of control, which need a precise
mathematical model of the plant, fuzzy control design is based
Fig. 10. Observed and measured shaft displacements on the Y axis obtained using the self-tuning FPIDC: (a) 10 Hz; (b) 20 Hz; (c) 30 Hz; (d) 40 Hz; (e) 50 Hz; (f) 60 Hz; (g)
70 Hz; (h) 80 Hz.
Table 4
Initial values of parameters used in the experiments.
PID controller K
p
= 1.2, K
I
= 2,
K
D
= 0.002, i
0
= 1.5
Self-tuning FPIDC K
e
= 0.6, K
ds
= 1,
a = 3.4, b
s
= 0.001,
i
0
= 1.5, K
ae
= 1.2,
K
rm
= 0.2, K
f
= 2.4,
K
fd
= 2.4
Unbalanced force observer k
d
= 12,000, k
i
= 35,
b
1
= 2.6, l
2
= 600,
l
d
= 45, g
s
= 4000
Fuzzy gain tuner SF
e
= 4, SF_ e
1:2,
SF
a
= 2.4
K.-Y. Chen et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 36 (2009) 85608570 8567
on an expert linguistic description of the system behavior. In other
words, fuzzy logic control is a knowledge-based system. In this
section, we describe the proposed fuzzy tuning mechanism, where
input signals obtained from the model-based force observer are
used to adjust the output signal of the self-tuning FPIDC of the
AMB system, thereby overcoming disturbances and suppressing
unbalanced vibration.
A block diagram of our AMB system with the model-based
unbalance compensator is shown in Fig. 5. A self-tuning FPIDC is
used to calculate the control current driving the electromagnets
suspending the rotor. Furthermore, a model-based unbalance com-
pensator, constructed with a model-based unbalanced forces ob-
server using the fuzzy gain tuning method, is used to suppress
Fig. 11. Shaft displacements on the Y axis and orbits of the rotor center obtained using the self-tuning FPIDC with fuzzy gain tuning mechanism: (a) 10 Hz; (b) 20 Hz; (c)
30 Hz; (d) 40 Hz; (e) 50 Hz; (f) 60 Hz; (g) 70 Hz; (h) 80 Hz.
8568 K.-Y. Chen et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 36 (2009) 85608570
unbalanced vibration and improve the control performance of the
AMB system.
The fuzzy rules of the gain tuning method are designed based
on variances in the magnitude and the rate of change of the vibra-
tion. These naturally increase as the force of the disturbance in-
creases. The vibration signal is periodic and symmetric. We thus
use the signal obtained from the observer and its derivative to de-
sign the fuzzy rules. Various types of fuzzy inference methods that
have been used to design the fuzzy logic controllers are described
in the literature (Chung et al., 1998; Gzelkaya et al., 2003; Mudi &
Pal, 1999; Qiao & Mizumoto, 1996; Woo et al., 2000). It is well-
known that the TakagiSugeno inference method enhances the
efciency of the defuzzication process, because it greatly simpli-
es the computation required by the Mamdani method. Hence, we
use the TakagiSugeno method to design the fuzzy tuner.
The proposed fuzzy tuner has two-input variables and a signal
output. The MFs for the input variables: the observed shaft dis-
placement ^ y
2
and the derivative of the observed shaft displacement
_
^ y
2
, are shown in Fig. 6, where the universe of discourse for each in-
put is normalized over the interval [1, 1]; the fuzzy variables are
labeled NB, NS, ZE, PS, and PB and represent negative
big, negative small, zero, positive small, and positive big,
respectively. Symmetrical triangular uniformly distributed MFs
are assigned for the two-input variables.
The rule base for the computation of the output variable a is
shown in Table 3. This is a commonly used two-dimensional phase
plane rule base. To make the self-tuning FPIDC produce a small
unbalanced vibration in the AMB system, the controller gain is
set to a large value, while ^ y
2
the and
_
^ y
2
are simultaneously positive
big or negative big. In other words, the gain should be set to a small
value to maintain dynamic equilibrium when the unbalanced
vibration of the AMB system is small, such as at rest or when rotat-
ing at a lower speed.
4. Experimental results
4.1. Experimental setup
The experimental setup used in this study consists of a two-axis
controlled horizontal shaft magnetic bearing symmetric in struc-
ture. The magnetic bearing has four identical electromagnets
equally spaced radially around a rotor disk which is made of lam-
inated stainless steel, as shown in Fig. 7a. Each electromagnet in-
cludes a coil and a laminated core made of silicon steel (Fuh &
Tung, 1997). The system is driven by an AC motor through a ex-
ible coupling. This helps to isolate the vibration originating from
the motor. A pair of eddy current type proximity probes is placed
outside the shaft near the electromagnets for measuring the hori-
zontal and vertical displacements at the geometric center of the
shaft. A photograph of the experimental setup is shown in Fig. 7b.
4.2. Results
There are two pairs of electromagnets in this AMB system: on
the X and Y axes. The two pairs of electromagnets are controlled
simultaneously by two PID controllers or two self-tuning FPIDCs.
Diagrams (a1), (b1)(h1) in Figs. 8 and 9 show the shaft displace-
ment on the Y axis; diagrams (a2), (b2)(h2) show the orbits about
the rotor center when only a conventional PID controller and a self-
tuning FPIDC are used at rotating speeds from 10 to 80 Hz. In gen-
eral, the shaft displacement (of the rotor center) is smaller in the
horizontal direction than that in the vertical direction because of
the effects of gravity. Hence, we only show the shaft displacement
on the Y axis here. A comparison at the differences between Figs. 8
and 9 show that, the control performance achieved via the self-
tuning FPIDC is better than that with the conventional PID
controller.
To evaluate the performance and characteristics of the proposed
fuzzy gain tuning mechanism, we look at an AMB system con-
trolled by a self-tuning FPIDC without feed-forward unbalanced
force compensation in the rst 10 s. The fuzzy updating gain is
brought into effect after 10 s. Fig. 10 shows the observed and mea-
sured shaft displacement on the Y axis obtained using a self-tuning
FPIDC, at rotational speeds from 10 to 80 Hz. The initial values of
all experimental parameters are shown in Table 4. From the results
in Fig. 10 we can see that the observed shaft displacement (ob-
tained from the model-based observer) is very close to the mea-
sured shaft displacement obtained from the position sensors.
Fig. 11 shows the shaft displacement on the Y axis, and the orbits
about the rotor center obtained using the self-tuning FPIDC with
the proposed fuzzy gain tuning mechanism, for rotating speeds
from 10 to 80 Hz. It can be seen that the proposed scheme can
noticeably reduce the shaft displacement. A comparison at Figs.
11 to 9 shows that the orbits around the rotor center have become
obviously smaller.
5. Conclusion
In this study, a fuzzy gain tuning mechanism is proposed to
suppress unbalanced vibrations in an AMB system. First, a mod-
el-based unbalanced forces estimator for the observation of unbal-
anced forces is described. The experimental results show that the
observed shaft displacements obtained with the observer are very
close to the measured shaft displacements observed by the posi-
tion sensors. We then designed a fuzzy gain tuner to adjust the
actuating signal of the self-tuning FPIDC. The experimental results
clearly show that this scheme improves the performance of a self-
tuning FPIDC for an AMB system.
We can conclude that the model-based unbalanced force obser-
ver fuzzy gain tuning mechanism is indeed more efcient at sup-
pressing unbalanced vibration in an AMB system, and is also
more robust in terms of system uncertainties and nonlinearities,
compared to the self-tuning FPIDC.
Acknowledgement
This project was supported by the National Science Council in
Taiwan, Republic of China, under Project No. NSC 96-2628-E-008-
075-MY3.
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