Proceedings of the 1998 JEEE
International Conference on Control Applications
Trieste, Italy 1-4 September 1998
Discrete Sliding Mode Controller for Pressure Control
with an Electrohydraulic Servovalve
Alexander Fink
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
SUNY at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14260
Abstract
Electrohydraulic servovalves are the most commonly
used control devices for hydraulic systems and are
difficult to control because they are in essence highly
nonlinear. In this study, a discrete time sliding mode
controller is designed to control the pressure drop
across a load. A nonlinear transformation is pre-
sented to convert the system dynamics to a linear
state space representation. The performance of the
controller is numerically analyzed a n d compared to a
classical PID controller.
Keywords: Electrohydraulic Servovalve, Discrete
Sliding Mode Controller
1. I n t r o d u c t i o n
Electrohydraulic servovalves are extensively used to
control hydraulic systems. Electrohydraulic servo
systems combine the high power of hydraulic action
with the versatility of an electronic control. The most
significant of these nonlinearities is noted to be the
flow saturation in the first stage of the valve.
A common method to design controllers, is to lin-
earize the system about a certain operating point and
design a linear controller for optimal performance at
this particular point. This method has proven to be
quite adequate for the majority of applications.
In order to meet the demands for a large operating
range and fast response with high accuracy, however,
the design of a nonlinear controller is essential to con-
trol the servovalve. So far, numerous nonlinear con-
trollers are available for the control of the spool dis-
placement but not for pressure control.
Sliding mode controllers are designed to robustly con-
trol systems with model imprecisions and are known
to achieve almost perfect tracking. The price for the
good performance, however, is extremely high control
Graduate Student, Mechanical &L Aerospace Engineering
Assistant Professor, llechamcal k Aerospace Engineering,
Member AIAA
0-7803-4104-X/98/$10.0001998 IEEE
WP03
Tarunraj Singh
activity. Originally, the sliding mode control theory
was developed in continuous time domain. The imple-
mentation of the controller on a digital computer re-
quires a certain sampling interval a n d the assumption
of an infinite switching time does not hold anymore.
This can yield chattering or even lead to system in-
stability.
In this study, the n o n h e a r pressure control loop is
modeled using first principles. Even though it is pos-
sible to reduce the order of the model to a third or-
der system without a significant loss of accuracy, this
model is still nonlinear. It includes the flow satura-
tion and the pressure-dependent flow described by the
orifice law. A nonlinear transformation will be used
to convert the system dynamics into linear equations.
Based on the linear system, a discrete sliding mode
controller is designed.
An application where pressure control is extensively
used is hydraulic braking or injection molding. The,
general pressure control assembly is shown in Fig. 1.
Hydraulic Fluid
Figure 1: Pressure control
There are several publications for modeling the dy-
namics of an electrohydraulic servovalve, some of
them focusing on certain parts of the valve. A quite
complex fourth order model including several nonlin-
earities was derived by Baysec and Rees Jones [l].
The books of Blackburn [2] and Merritt [6] offer a
strong basis for modeling hydraulic systems. They
also discuss control of servovalves.
In his survey paper, Utkin [SI gives a thorough de-
scription of the sliding mode theory in continuous
3 78
 time. Drakunov [3] and Furuta [j]proposed tech-
niques to design sliding mode controllers in discrete
domain. Milosavljevic [7] derived conditions which
ensure the existence of a sliding mode in discrete time,
the so called quasi-sliding mode.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 , the
model of the pressure control loop including the elec-
trohydraulic servovalve is derived. A nonlinear trans-
formation will be presented to convert the originally
nonlinear equations into a linear state space repre-
sentation. Based on the linear equation, the discrete
sliding mode controller is designed in Section 3. The
simulations in Section 4 illustrate the, exceIIent per-
formance of the controlIer. Section 5 summarizes the
results of this study.
2. Model of the Pressure Control Loop
The system under consideration is shown in Fig. 2.
The pressure control loop includes the controller to
be designed and the electrohydraulic servovalve.
Figure 2: Pressure control loop
The fluid flow to the load can be calculated as
&I = kqc,j xs (1)
where x, is the spool displacement of the valve.
Eqn. (1) describes the flow through an orifice where
kqe,, is the nonlinear flow conversion factor depen-
dent on the pressure p t . The flow conversion factor
can be evaluated as
where p, is the supply pressure of the hydraulic sys-
tem. The constant k, includes the geometry of the
orifice, the discharge coefficient, and the properties of
the hydraulic fluid. For position control kq,,, can be
assumed to be constant, but for pressure control the
value varies significantly and cannot be neglected.
From the block diagram, the following differential
equation can be obtained
(3)
The model used for the electrohydraulic servovalve
which includes an inner loop for position control is
shown in Fig. 3 .
379
Figure 3: Model of the valve
The reference value z,?=, for the spool displacement
x, is equivalent to the control signal U in Fig. 2 .
The parameter G contains the gain for an inter-
nal proportional controller, the electrical gain of the
torque motor, and the hydraulic amplification factor.
The saturation function which follows the gain rep-
resents the flow saturation in the first stage of the
valve with the limit QJmam, which operates on the
flow driving the spool. All the electrical, mechani-
cal and hydraulic dynamics are lumped together in
a linear first order system with the time constant T.
The output of this linear block xlitl represents the
hydraulic flow to the boost chambers of the spool.
The last three blocks in the diagram model the spool
dynamics with a saturation function for the limited
stroke, ,,,z, . The cross sectional area of the spool is
A , . The position of the spool is internally fed back
via an electrical displacement transducer.
The dynamics of the valve are described by the equa-
tions l
1 .
= -2[in2, (5)
A,
with x 5 being limited by x5,,,.
With Eqn. ( 3 ) , these equations completely describe
the model of the pressure control loop.
A unique nonlinear transformation will be used to
linearize the system dynamics. The nonlinear system
will be converted from one state space representation
into another. The dynamics itself will be linear but
the control will still be- subject to a saturation func-
tion.
The first step is to eliminate coupled terms which
are dependent on two different states or on a system
state and the input. By opening the inner position
control loop, the saturation function operates only on
the control input U. Eqn (4) becomes
The nonlinear flow equation, Eqn. (3), can be lin-
earized by introducing a new state z with
(7)
‘For the saturation function, the following notation is used
y = s a t ( r . y,,,) where ymaI is the saturation value.
By differentiating Eqn. ( 7 ) and substituting for il we sk = 0 is the so called hyperplane which is equiva-
obtain lent to the sliding surface in continuous time. Since
. = -kgx,
z
P it cannot be ensured that the states remain on the
v, ot (8)
surface for all time because of the discretization, it
is also called quasi sliding mode. Again, C is chosen
Using t instead of p i , the system becomes a third
such that the system is asymptotically stable while
order linear system with a bounded input. The equa-
being on the hyperplane.
tions of motion for the model can be written in matrix
notation:
The sliding mode control law consists of two terms,
the nominal control term and an additional term.
The nominal or equivalent control is designed to keep
the system on the sliding surface. In continuous con-
trol, this can be stated by

S = O (17)
In discrete time, this can be represented as
3. Discrete Sliding Mode Controller
sk+l = s k (18)
Furuta [5] developed a discrete sliding mode con- which has to be satisfied by the nominal control.
troller for linear systems. His approach will be used Substituting Eqns. (11) and (16) into (18) gives
in order to satisfy the so-called reaching condition.
The development in this section compares the design cxk+l = C @ x k + CrUk = c x k (19)
procedure in continuous and discrete time domain.
With the discrete control law
The continuous fith-order linear system

A=Ax+Bu (10)
Fe, can be calculated as
transforms to
Fe, = -(Cr)-'C(@ - I )

After stabilizing the system on the slidingsurface, the

in discrete time domain, where the state xk stands reaching condition has to be satisfied. The system has
for x(kA) and A is the sampling period. If, and r to be forced on the sliding surface when not on it.
are given as With Eqn. (16), a Lyapunov function can be defined
a by
@ = I? = eA'dTB (12) 1
Vk = -s;
2
The control In continuous domain, a system is asymptotically sta-
ble when V is negative, For V = is2
this is satisfied
u(t) = Uk with kA 5 t < ( k + 1)A (13) if
ss < 0 (23)
is held constant for one sampling period.
The control law
The sliding surface S in continuous time is defined as

s = {x I c x = 0) (14)
U Ueq + Ur (24)
with
where C is chosen such that the system is asymp- ueP= -(Cb)-'CAx (25)
totically stable as long as it remains on the sliding
surface. The scalar

s =c x (15)
for E > 0, satisfies Eqn. (23).
is a measure of the distance to the sliding surface S. Now, we will consider the discrete case. Discretizing
In discrete time. sk is defined similar to Eqn. (15) Eqn. ( 2 3 ) yields

sh. = CXk (16) s ( k )[ s ( k + 1) - s ( k ) ] < 0 (27)

380
This is a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient
for the existence of a sliding motion. Fig. 4 illustrates
that despite satisfying Eqn. (271, the states can actu-
ally leave the sliding surface.
Figure 4: Unstable sliding mode in discrete time
Tn order to satisfy the reaching condition, the follow-
ing inequality has to be satisfied, too
4. Simulation Results
4.1. Simulations
For the simulation of the electrohydraulic system, the
data from a standard nozzle flapper valve was used.
The sliding mode controller has to track a given pres-
sure profile. A common method to compare the con-
trol performance is to use a ramp input. In this study,
the pressure rises from zero to half of the supply pres-
sure in 3Qms. This input ensures that the system still
can follow the reference signal.
The tracking error and the control for the designed
controller are shown in Fig. 5. The dashed line in the
first subplot corresponds to the reference input.

Isk+11 < lSkl (28)

Furuta [5] proposes a control law that satisfies

which is equivalent to Eqn. (28).

The control law is
uk = ( F e q 4-F D ) X ~ (30)
where Fe, is given by Eqn. (21) and fi, the compo-

-0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06

tlme [SI
Figure 5: Performance of the controller, Ts= 0.001s

Si is given by The performance is excellent. There is a tracking

n error at the begining and end of the ramp, but this
1 error vanishes quickly. The controller yields perfect
02 = ,(cr)2fol%I
I IQ, I
3 =1 tracking during the ramp and a t the final value.
where the amplitude of fo is limited by The performance of the controller can be tuned by
changing the value of fo, as shown in Fig. 6.

t l , is the j-th element of tl satisfying

ct1= I
I I
-20' 001 om 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06
Ct,=O for i = 2 , ...,n lime (SI
Figure 6: Tracking errors for different values of fo
with
t, It, for i #j SVhen the hyperplane Sk = 0 is left due to the flow
This means that t l has to be perpendicular to all saturation, the states are forced back onto the sliding
vectors defining the null space of C. surface depending on the value of fo.
By comparing the switching terms in continuous do- The impact of different sampling intervals was of spe-
main, ( E q n . (X)).
and in discrete time (Eqn. ( S I ) ) , it cial interest. A comparison of the tracking errors for
can be seen that there is a dead-zone in the discrete different sampling is shown in Fig. 7 .
case. This results in a linear control law in the vicin- It can be seen that an increase of the sampling rate
ity of the hyperplane and chattering is prevented. from T,= 0.001sto T, = 0.0005s does not improve

38 1

',
-5
001 OM 003 OW 005
time [s]
dashed line: T,= 0 0005s
solid line: T,= 0.001s
dashdotted line: T, = 0.0015s
Figure 7: Tracking errors for different sampling rates
the results significantly, whereas the sampling with
T, = 0.0015s is too slow to control the fast dynamics
of the system well. In order to obtain a good per-
formance with a reasonable sampling, l m s should be
favored for the sampling interval.
4.2. Discussion of the Results
The simulation results for the sliding mode controller
are excellent, Even by having a relatively coarse sam-
pling, the performance is very good. The controller
tracks the input profile perfectly and does not tend to
chatter since the control law is linear in the vicinity
of the sliding surface. Also, its stability is insensitive
to the sampling rate
In Fig. 8, the tracking error of the discrete sliding
mode controller is compared to the results of a linear
PID controller optimized for a good performance.
0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
time [SI
dashdotted line: Linear PID controller
solid line: Sliding mode controller, T,= 0.001s
Figure 8: Tracking error compared to a PID controller
A t the begining and end of the ramp input, both con-
trollers have approximately the same tracking error.
It can be seen that the PID controller yields oscilla-
tions and the tracking error vanishes slowly, whereas
the sliding mode error smoothly approaches zero more
quickly. It should be noted that the PED controller
is realized in continuous time since the results in dis-
crete domain are much worse.
I n Fig. 8.the similar peaks for the tracking errors are
due to the flow saturation which is limiting the whole
control performance and the system is not able to
follow the input profile exactly. Fig. 9 shows the sat-
uration of the flow for both controllers. Here again.
it can be seen, that the PID controller leads to strong
oscillations in the system. For the sliding mode con-
troller, the control has peaks where the slope of the
input profile changes and is relatively smooth else-
where.
006
!'
c( 1'
dashdotted line: Linear PID controller
solid line: Saturating controller, T, = 0.001s
Figure 9: Flow saturation
5. Concluding Remarks
In this study, the pressure control loop including an
electrohydraulic servovalve has been modeled. The
closed loop performance has been studied numerically
and the discrete sliding mode controller yields excel-
lent tracking which is dominantly limited by the flow
saturation in the first stage of the valve.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Dave Norman, Moog Inc., for infor-
mation that was used throughout this work.
References
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0 06
[3] Drakunov, S . V. and Utkin, V. I., On Drscrete-
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