Research Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

2018, Vol. 10(3) 1–13
Ó The Author(s) 2018
Application of moving sliding mode DOI: 10.1177/1687814018762184
journals.sagepub.com/home/ade
control for a DC motor driven four-bar
mechanism

xakar1
Orhan C and Alper Kadir Tanyıldızı2

Abstract
The angular velocity of the input link of a mechanism fluctuates due to the inertia of links and the external forces,
although it is generally assumed constant in design. The control of the crank angular velocity of a four-bar mechanism
driven by a DC motor by moving sliding mode control is considered in this study. A time-varying slope is proposed
based on the error state. The mathematical model of the motor-mechanism system is derived using Eksergian’s equation
of motion. First, the state space equations are solved numerically for constant motor voltage to show the velocity fluc-
tuations of the crank. Then both the conventional sliding mode control method and the proposed moving sliding mode
control method are applied to obviate this unwanted velocity fluctuation. The method is verified by numerical simula-
tions as well as experimental studies. The results of both the sliding mode control and the moving sliding mode control
methods are compared. It is shown that a moving sliding surface in the sliding mode control increases the robustness of
conventional sliding mode control by decreasing the reaching time. Also, the performance of the moving sliding mode
control against parametric variations and external disturbances is experimentally investigated by adding a mass and apply-
ing an unexpected force on one of the links of the mechanism.

Keywords
Moving sliding mode control, four-bar mechanism, velocity control

Date received: 14 September 2017; accepted: 31 January 2018

Handling Editor: Yong Chen

Introduction fluctuations slightly, the changing of motor voltage or

Four-bar mechanisms, which have four rigid links and
four revolute joints, driven by a DC motor, are com-
monly used in a variety of real-world applications. In
general, the angular velocity of the crank of the
mechanism is assumed to be constant. But the reaction
torque of the crank varies due to the external forces
and the inertia of links of the mechanism and as a
result the velocity of the crank is fluctuated. Hence, the
expected behaviour of the mechanism such as timing
requirement can be altered and its performance is
reduced.1–3 Therefore, in order to design a high-
accuracy machine system, the correction of speed fluc-
tuations is very important. Although using the flywheel
for the mechanical system corrects the speed
current according to the speed error to control motor
speed is very popular. Tao and Sadler4 developed some
control strategies based on proportional–integral–deri-
vative (PID) control theory to reduce the crank angular
velocity fluctuations of a four-bar mechanism driven
by a DC motor and coupled a gearbox. It was shown
by numerical simulations that crank speed fluctuations
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Firat University, Elazig, Turkey
2
Department of Mechatronics Engineering, Firat University, Elazig, Turkey
Corresponding author:
Orhan C xakar, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Firat University,
Elazig 23119, Turkey.
Email: cakaro@firat.edu.tr

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open-access-at-sage).
2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
can be reduced substantially adjusting the DC motor
voltage using feedback control.
Since PID controller is very sensitive to the nonli-
nearities, the tuning of the PID gains properly is quite
difficult. During the past decades, to increase the cap-
abilities of PID controllers, many artificial intelligence
(AI) techniques such as neural networks (NNs), fuzzy
systems and fuzzy neural network (FNN) have been
employed.5–7 Gündoğdu and Erentürk8 used a fuzzy
logic controller (FLC) to regulate crank speed fluctua-
tions of the four-bar mechanism driven by a DC motor.
Performance of the proposed method was compared
with the optimum PID control method suggested in
Tao and Sadler.4 It was shown that the FLC method is
more efficient and robust than the PID control. In their
study, it was observed that the rise time to steady-state
condition was very fast without a large overshoot and
the percentage of speed fluctuations was very low com-
pared to open-loop responses and PID controller cases.
The drawbacks of PID control such as sensitivity to
nonlinearity can be avoided by sliding mode control
(SMC) which has been used effectively in many control
areas recently. SMC constitutes choosing the sliding
surface and determining the control law for the state
variables to move on the sliding surface. Sxevkat and
Telli9 applied the SMC to the four-bar mechanism dri-
ven by a DC motor and compared the results with those
of Tao and Sadler4 and Gündoğdu and Erentürk.8
They adopted a filter in order to alleviate the chattering
phenomenon in SMC. It is concluded that the perfor-
mance of the SMC is better than that of nonlinear PID
and FLC.
The performance of the SMC strictly depends on the
control gain. When the control gain is large, the reach-
ing time to the sliding surface from the initial state is
minimized. But the chattering phenomenon, which is
undesirable for practical applications, occurs for large
values of the control gain. One way to alleviate the
chattering phenomenon is to employ a boundary layer,
which includes the uncertainties around the sliding sur-
face. But this approach degrades the robustness.
However, the bound of the uncertainties is difficult to
obtain beforehand for practical applications. Fung
et al.10 applied SMC for position control of a crank–
slider mechanism driven by a PM synchronous servo
motor. They utilized a simple fuzzy inference mechan-
ism to estimate the upper bound of uncertainties for
SMC. It was shown that the proposed method has
robust control performance to parametric variations
and external disturbances. Then Fung and Shaw11 pre-
sented a method named as region-wise linear F-SMC in
order to increase the performance of the controller by
minimizing the number of fuzzy rules. Lin et al.12 added
a supervisory controller to FNN-SMC controller pre-
sented in Kao et al.7 in order to stabilize the system
states around the bounded region. Lin and Wai13
adopted an online-trained FNN to estimate the bound
of uncertainties in real time. Hwang and Kuo14
designed a stable F-SMC for highly nonlinear systems.
The uncertainties were assumed to be large enough and
an adaptive fuzzy model was employed to model them.
An equivalent control using the known part of system
dynamics and the learning fuzzy model is designed to
achieve the desired control behaviour. The verification
and usefulness of the proposed control were demon-
strated by the simulations and experiments of velocity
control of the four-bar linkage system. Then, Hwang
and Hsieh15 designed an estimator for the tracking
error to obtain a sliding surface and to decrease the
number of unknown nonlinear functions required to
learn. Koca et al.16 used SMC in conjunction with type
2 fuzzy logic for the control of crank angular speed of a
four-bar mechanism driven by a DC motor. The pro-
posed method reduces the number of fuzzy rules.
Recently, Al-Jarrah et al.17 investigated, experimen-
tally, the dynamic performance of the four-bar mechan-
ism driven by a geared DC motor under different
operating conditions using various control schemes
such as filtered PID, filtered SMC, filtered FC and fil-
tered genetics-based reinforcement neuro-controller.
Another way to improve the robustness of SMC is
to rotate and/or shift the sliding surface during control
action which is called as moving sliding mode control
(MSMC) proposed by Choi and colleagues.18,19 SMC
with a moving sliding surface (MSS) has a robust and
fast response. The MSS was designed to pass the initial
conditions at first and subsequently moved towards a
predetermined sliding surface by rotating and/or shift-
ing. Employing the MSS, it is possible to lessen the sen-
sitivity of the system to extraneous disturbances by
means of shortening the reaching phase without
increasing undesirable chattering of the control signals.
Furthermore, the reaching phase can be almost elimi-
nated by increasing the dwelling time of the surface,
hence guaranteeing system robustness during the whole
interval of the control action. Due to these advantages
of MSMC, it has various applications in engineer-
ing.20–23 However, some researchers proposed a differ-
ent time-varying sliding surface.24–27
In this article, MSMC is employed to control the
velocity of the input link of a four-bar mechanism dri-
ven by a DC motor. A simple time-varying sliding sur-
face slope is proposed. The results are compared with
those of conventional SMC. Also, an experimental
study was performed to demonstrate the performance
of the method in the real applications. However, the
robustness of the method against parametric variations
and external disturbances is investigated.
In what follows, the equation of motion of the
motor-mechanism system is built up and represented in
the state space. Then the theories of the conventional
SMC and MSMC are introduced briefly. Next the
Cxakar and Tanyıldızı
Figure 1. Schematic representation of a four-bar mechanism driven by a DC motor with a gearbox.
effectiveness of the proposed MSMC method is demon-
strated by the numerical simulation proposed in
Tanyıldızı and Cxakar.28 Then an experimental study
with comparisons is given. In the last section, the
results are concluded.
Mathematical model of a DC motor–
gearbox mechanism system
The kinematic diagram of the rigid four-bar mechanism
with a DC motor and a gearbox is depicted in Figure 1.
Output shaft of the gearbox is coupled to link 2. The
lengths of the links are given by ri (i = 1–4). The angu-
lar position of the input link 2 is represented by q and
the angular positions of the other moving links are
described by f1 and f2. Gi and ci (i=2,3,4) are the mass
centres of the links and the distance of the mass centre
of the link i to the close joint, respectively.
The mathematical model of a DC motor including a
geared speed reducer with the velocity ratio n is given
by Sadler et al.1
dia 1 
= Va  Ra ia (t)  nKg q_
dt La
where Va is the input voltage; Ra, La and ia(t) are the
armature resistance, the armature inductance and
the time-dependent armature current, respectively; Kg is
the constant for the motor voltage and n defines the
velocity ratio of the input shaft to the output shaft of
the gearbox such that n . 1. On the other hand, the out-
put torque of the DC motor–gearbox system is given by
 
T2 = n nJ€q  nBq_ + Km ia  Tf
where J is the mass moment of inertia of the rotor
including the mass moment of inertia of the gearbox
which reduced to the motor shaft; B is the viscous
damping at the bearings; Km is the constant of motor
3
torque; Tm = Km ia is the torque generated by the motor;
and Tf represents the torque due to mechanical losses
such as brush friction, gear friction and dry bearing
friction.
Eksergian’s generalized equation of motion for a sin-
gle-degree-of-freedom system is given by Paul29
1 d=(q) 2
=(q)€q + q_ = Q(q, q,
_ t) ð3Þ
2 dq
where q is the independent or generalized coordinate
and q_ and €q are its time derivatives. For the four-bar
mechanism, they correspond to the angular position,
velocity and acceleration of the crank, respectively. = is
the equivalent inertia; the term 0:5(d==dq) is called as
the centripetal coefficient and Q is the equivalent force.
The equivalent inertia is determined from the kinetic
energy of the mechanism in the form of EK = 0:5=q_ 2
and it can be written for the four bar mechanism as
X
4    
=¼ mi u2i þ v2i þ Ii h2i ð4Þ
i=2
ð1Þ and the centripetal coefficient is determined as
1 d= X 4    
C¼ ¼ mi ui u0i þ vi v0i þ Ii hi h0i ð5Þ
2 dq i¼2
where mi and Ii are the mass and the mass moment of
inertia of the link i, respectively; ui and vi are the x and
y components of the velocity influence coefficients
for the mass centre of the link i in Cartesian coordinate
system; u0i and v0i define the components of acceleration
ð2Þ
influence coefficient which are the derivatives of the
velocity coefficient with respect to the independent
variable q; and hi and h0i are the velocity and accelera-
tion coefficients corresponding to the rotation of the
link i, respectively. The equivalent force can be
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
determined from the virtual power principle (W_ = Qq)
_ e(t) = ½ e1 (t) e2 (t)  = ½ x1 (t)  xd1 (t) x2 (t)  xd2 (t) 
as follows
m h
X i X4
Q¼ Fjx uFj þ Fjy vFj þ Ti hi ð6Þ
j¼1 i¼2
where Fix and Fiy ( j = 1,2,.,m) are the components of
external or active force; uFj and vFj are the x and y com-
ponents of the velocity influence coefficients of the
point at which the external force Fj acts. In this study,
the external forces Fj are not included and the input
torque acting on the crank T2 is the active force only,
so the generalized force is Q = T2. It should be noted
that the nonconservative and dissipative forces can be
included in equation (6) when they are presented. The
necessary velocity and acceleration influence coeffi-
cients of the four-bar mechanism are calculated and
given in Appendix 1.
Equations (1) and (3) represent the mathematical
model of the DC motor–gearbox mechanism system.
For the solution of this equation set, the fourth-order
Runge–Kutta method is employed in this study. For
this, the new state variables x1, x2 and x3 are introduced
as
x1 = q
x2 = x_ 1 = q_ ð7Þ
x3 = ia
and then the state space equations can be written as
x_ 1 = x2
1   :
x_ 2 = Cx22  n2 Bx2 + nKm x3  nTf
=+n J 2 ð8Þ
1  where e is a constant which introduces a boundary layer
x_ 3 = Va  Ra x3  nKg x2
L
SMC design
SMC is known as a variable structural control method
robustly controlling complex high-order nonlinear sys-
tems. The most important advantage of SMC is the
insensitivity to parametric variations and external dis-
turbances. In SMC, the user chooses a sliding surface
in the state space and the control law forces the state
variables to get close to the sliding surface and to slide
towards the origin. For a second-order system, there is
a sliding surface defined below
s(x, t) = ce1 (t) + e2 (t) ð9Þ
where c is a strictly positive real constant which deter-
mines the slope of the sliding surface and e1 and e2 are
the tracking errors defined in the state space as
ð10Þ
where xd is the desired trajectory. Equation (9) is a lin-
ear homogeneous differential equation for s = 0. In this
condition, c is the pole of this equation and the error
reaches asymptotically zero for the positive value of c
for any initial condition provided that there exists a
control law. In order to obtain a control law, a
Lyapunov function, which is defined as V(s) = 1/2s2
with V(0) = 0 and V(s) . 0 for s . 0, can be used.
Consequently, the stability in the sliding mode condi-
tion is guaranteed and a good tracking performance
can be achieved for dV =dt = s_s  0.
The general control rule can be chosen as
u(t) = Ksign(s) ð11Þ
where u(t) is the control input and K is a strictly positive
real constant with a lower bound depending on the esti-
mated system parameters. Note that, in this study, the
control input is the motor voltage, Va, and in the simu-
lations a voltage limit is used to avoid damage to the
motor. The control input with the sign function is the
discontinuous control law that requires infinite switch-
ing on the sliding surface. In this way, the trajectory is
forced to always move towards the sliding surface. The
switching control signal has an important disadvantage
of SMC which is known as chattering. To eliminate
chattering, the sign function can be changed by satura-
tion function which can be defined as
8 9
< s.e 1 =
sat(s) = s\  e 1 ð12Þ
;
e\s\e s=e
around the switching surface.
MSMC design
In conventional SMC, the sliding surface is fixed with a
constant slope of nonoptimal or optimal value of c in
the error state space. Hence, if the representative point
lies in the stable zone, that is, the second and fourth
quadrants in the phase plane, then the absolute value
of e2(t) becomes small for a fixed gain of K when large
values are chosen for c. This yields a longer reaching
time to the surface s(t). On the other hand, if a small
value for c is chosen, the convergence speed on the sur-
face itself will be slow, leading to a longer tracking
time. Therefore, if an appropriate small value for a
time-varying slope c is chosen, fast tracking will be
achieved without increasing the gain K. This is the key
feature of the MSS proposed in Choi and Park.18 The
surface is initially chosen to pass arbitrary initial
Cxakar and Tanyıldızı 5

Table 1. Mechanism and motor parameters for numerical simulation.4,9

Mechanism parameters
Links (i)
1 2 3 4

ri (m) 0.5593 0.102 0.610 0.406

ci (m) 0.0 0.305 0.203
mi (kg) 1.362 1.362 0.2041
Ji (kg m2) 0.00071 0.0173 0.00509
bi (rad) 0.0 0.0 0.0

DC motor parameters
R (O) L (H) Km (N m/A) Kg (V s) J (kg m2) Tf (N m) B (N m s)

0.4 0.050 0.678 0.678 0.056 0.00 0.226

V s: Volt-second; N m s: Newton-meter-second.

reaching time is shortened. On the other hand, if the

(a) (b)
Figure 2. Illustration of moving sliding surface: (a) rotating
sliding surface and (b) shifting sliding surface.
conditions, and the surface is subsequently moved
towards the predetermined sliding surface. When the
reaching phase is achieved, the movement is terminated
and the sliding phase continues with a constant slope
value as the conventional SMC. The movement can be
executed by rotating/shifting the slope c as shown in
Figure 2. Rotating is proposed in the stable zone, while
shifting is proposed in the unstable zone. In this article,
MSMC with the rotating type of sliding surface is
adopted for velocity control of the four-bar linkage.
An MSS is proposed such that its time-varying slope is
defined as follows
 
e2 (t)
c(t) = c0  ; 0\t\tr
e1 (t)
where c0 is a positive constant and tr is the time where
the reaching phase is completed. Essentially, the error
ratio e2 (t)=e1 (t) in the equation corresponds to the
slope of a surface which satisfies s(t) = 0 at any time t.
By adding c0, a neighbour of this surface is taken to
eliminate nonidealities, such as delays. In this way, the
surface approaches the representative point and the
sign of the ratio is negative this means that the error is
decreasing and vice versa. However, as the velocity
error approaches zero, the magnitude of the ratio and
consequently the slope of the surface grow.
It should be noted that, when the mechanism starts
to run at zero velocity and acceleration, the velocity
error has a negative sign and the acceleration error is
zero. Hence, c0 with a positive value guarantees that
the sliding surface is in the stable zone. c0 is the mini-
mum or the initial value of the slope in this case. On
the other hand, at the beginning of the reaching phase,
the velocity error decreases, while the acceleration error
increases to compensate for the velocity error at first.
Then the acceleration error decreases as the velocity
error approaches zero. Consequently, the slope changes
from a minimum value cmin to a maximum value cmax
which are determined by the error ratio at the initial
time t0 and at the final time of the reaching phase tr,
respectively. After the reaching phase is achieved, the
movement of the slope is terminated and fixed at its
last value. After that, because the sliding phase starts a
large positive constant value of c, the velocity error will
approach zero asymptotically.
Numerical simulations
For the numerical simulation, a four-bar mechanism
and a DC motor without gearbox is considered. The
ð13Þ parameters of the motor-mechanism system shown in
Figure 1 are given in Table 1.4,9 The state space repre-
sentation of the four-bar mechanism and the motor
system is simulated using the Runge–Kutta method. A
MATLAB code is implemented for the integration of
equations of motion given in equation (8). The system
is simulated for a 5-s duration with 5 3 1024 s time
step where the motor voltage is 30 V. The crank angu-
lar position and velocity are set to ‘0’ (zero) for the
6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Table 2. Comparison of the velocity parameters for SMC and MSMC.

Control law Slope c Average speed Rise time (s) Overshoot (%) Speed fluctuations (%)

No control – 37.0353 0.1015 57.3415 15.21

SMC 80 30.0047 0.0336 0.1246 0.22
MSMC Moving 30.0014 0.0269 0.1019 0.19

SMC: sliding mode control; MSMC: moving sliding mode control.

velocity and acceleration values from their desired val-

Figure 3. Crank velocity for the without-control case.
initial conditions. The time history of the crank velocity
(v2 = q)_ for 2 s is plotted in Figure 3. It is seen that the
velocity of the crank fluctuates between 34.903 and
39.465 rad/s after a high level of overshoot.
It is desired that the crank rotates with 30 rad/s con-
stant velocity. To achieve this, both SMC and MSMC
methods were applied and the results were compared.
The errors e1 and e2 are calculated by subtracting the
ues at each time step. For the conventional SMC, the
parameter c is chosen as 80 which was taken from
xevkat and Telli.9 It should be noted that, although the
S
conventional SMC with a filter is used in Kao et al.7
and Sxevkat and Telli,9 it is strengthened with the satura-
tion function to eliminate chattering in this study.
The block diagram of the system with MSMC is
shown in Figure 4. For the MSMC, the errors were cal-
culated first, then the specific c values were calculated
for each error state satisfying s(t) = 0 by means of
equation (13), where c0 = 6 and tr = 0.0293. The value
of tr was taken to be slightly smaller than the rise time
of the conventional SMC. In this example, the rise time
for conventional SMC was found to be 0.0303 s. The
control voltage was calculated using equation (11)
where the saturation function given in equation (12)
was used instead of the sign function. The obtained
results, such as average speed, rise time, overshoot and
speed fluctuations, for both SMC and MSMC are given
in Table 2. The comparison of the crank velocity for
MSMC and the conventional SMC with two zoomed
regions including the reaching and sliding phases is
shown in Figure 5. It is seen that the desired velocity is
achieved in a short time in the case of MSMC com-
pared to the conventional SMC, as expected. The rise
time for MSMC was determined as 0.0269 s and it is

Figure 4. Moving sliding-mode-controlled motor-mechanism system.

Cxakar and Tanyıldızı
Figure 5. Comparison of the crank velocities for MSMC and
conventional SMC.
11.5% shorter than that of the conventional SMC. For
the MSMC, the change of the slope and the error ratio
with time are shown in Figure 6(a) and (b). It is seen
that, while the error ratio is decreasing, the slope
increases with time. The slope has a constant value of
100.5 after tr = 0.0293 s because the moving algorithm
was terminated at this time. The discontinuous point
on the error ratio graph shows that the representative
point crosses the desired velocity, that is, the velocity
error is zero. It should be pointed out that because
these discontinuities occur after the reaching phase this
method is not affected. The time tr has a crucial role in
the performance of the method. The smaller the value
of tr, the longer the reaching time. On the other hand,
the larger value of tr may result in a longer tracking
time. The sliding surface for the MSMC is also shown
in Figure 7.
(a)
Figure 6. Change of (a) slope and (b) error ratio with time, for c0 = 7 and tr = 0.0293 s.
7
Experimental study
An experimental system depicted in Figure 8 was set up
in order to examine the effectiveness of the control
methods. The crank of the four-bar mechanism is dri-
ven by a DC motor without gearbox. The parameters
of the mechanism and the DC motor are given in
Table 3.
For the data acquisition and motor control, a
dSPACE DS1104 R&D real-time controller board was
used. It is fully programmable from the MATLAB/
Simulink block diagram environment and all I/O can
be configured graphically. After the configuration, the
real-time model code can be generated, compiled and
automatically downloaded to the DS1104. To drive the
motor, an IGBT-based H bridge power convertor was
used (Leybold Didactic GmbH, 732 297). The control
signal was compared with the ramp function and sent
to the DS1104SL_DSP_PWM unit to generate PWM
signals for the IGBTs. The angular position and velo-
city of the crank were measured by a Nemicon NOC-S
type 2500 pulse/rev incremental encoder. The block
diagram of the real-time control system is depicted in
Figure 9.
First, the system was run without any control by
applying a constant input voltage of 30 V to the motor.
The experiment was performed for 5 s with a time incre-
ment of 0.0002 s. Figure 10 shows the step response of
the crank angular velocity such that it fluctuates
between 13 and 19 rad/s because of the variable inertia.
Second, the conventional SMC was used to control
the velocity of the crank. The desired velocity value of
the crank was chosen as 20 rad/s. The system was run
and the velocity error was determined by comparing
the desired velocity and the velocity data taken from
the encoder. The motor control voltage was calculated
using the velocity error and its derivative in SMC
(b)
8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Table 3. Mechanism and motor parameters for the experimental study.

Mechanism parameters
Links (i)
1 2 3 4

ri (m) 0.455 0.045 0.536 0.272

ci (m) 0.0 0.268 0.136
mi (kg) 1.311 0.506 0.208
Ji (kg m2) 0.0019 0.0167 0.0058
bi (rad) 0.0 0.0 0.0

DC motor parameters
R (O) L (H) Km (N m/A) Kg (V) J (kg m2) Tf (N m) B (N m)

25.5871 1.4643 1.0672 1.3758 0.00051 0.00 0.00169

Power (kW) Torque (N m) Speed (r/min) Voltage (V) Current (A)
1.1 3.2 1500 200 5.5

Figure 8. Experimental setup of a four-bar mechanism driven

by a DC motor.

Figure 7. The sliding surface for MSMC.

formulas. The PWM signal was generated by the

dSPACE DS1104 controller board and applied to
the motor driver. The crank velocity is shown in
Figure 11(a). Unfortunately, in this case, the desired
velocity could not be reached, although it is expected in
SMC that the velocity error approaches zero asympto-
tically in a finite time. It is thought that this unexpected
behaviour may be due to the motor trigger rate being
lower than the sample time of the applied voltage. It is
expected in the SMC that the applied voltage changes
between the positive and negative peak values.
However, as can be seen in Figure 11(b), the peak vol-
tage value was not reached with few exceptions during
the runtime. For this reason, the motor could not reach
the desired velocity. In order to avoid damage to the
motor, the experiments were not continued for the dif-
ferent SMC parameters. Figure 9. Block diagram of the real-time control system.
Cxakar and Tanyıldızı
Figure 10. Crank angular velocity for the without-control case
in the experimental study.
Then the proposed MSMC algorithm was applied to
control the system and it was observed that the result
was very satisfactory. It is evident from Figure 12(a)
that the velocity reaches the desired value in a very
short time. The crank velocity comes to a stable zone in
0.165 s. The rise time is 0.017 s and the velocity fluctua-
tion is vitally reduced such that the velocity fluctuates
between 19.50 and 20.45 rad/s despite the overshoot of
17%. Moreover, the chattering is significantly elimi-
nated as shown in Figure 12(b). These show the effi-
ciency of the proposed MSMC method.
One of the important properties of SMC is that it is
insensitive to the change of parameters and to the dis-
turbing effects. In order to show the effectiveness of the
MSMC over these effects, two experiments were also
carried out. In the first case, a 0.5 kg mass is added to
link 4 to simulate the change of parameters without
changing the controller parameters used in previous
experiment. The velocity and voltage responses of the
(a)
Figure 11. (a) Crank velocity and (b) control voltage for the conventional SMC.
9
system are shown in Figure 13. It is clearly seen that
the method is insensitive to parametric variation.
In the second case, a nonlinear unknown force was
simulated by touching to the link 4 suddenly when the
mechanism was working. In this case, the amplitude of
the force and the time duration were not known. The
velocity response and the control voltage are shown in
Figure 14. It is seen that the system response is dis-
torted as soon as the force is applied, then the control-
ler stabilizes the crank velocity in about 0.4 s by a large
change in control voltage. Note that the experiments
were also made for different crank velocities. Similar
results were found although the results were not given
here for brevity.
Conclusion
In this study, MSMC was adopted for velocity control
of a four-bar mechanism driven by a DC motor.
Although, in SMC, the slope of the sliding surface is
chosen by the user optimally or nonoptimally, it is cal-
culated based on the error state at each integration of
time during the reaching phase in the proposed
MSMC. The initial values of the slope and the rotating
time have a crucial role in the performance of the pro-
posed method. The rise time of the conventional SMC
can be chosen as the time of the rotating procedure
terminated.
The numerical simulations as well as the experimen-
tal studies showed that the MSMC has a smaller reach-
ing time and robust control compared to the
conventional SMC. A most important result observed
in the experimental study is that, in the SMC, the
desired crank velocity was not achieved. It was thought
that this may be because the motor trigger rate is lower
than the sample time of the applied voltage. On the
contrary, in the case of MSMC, the desired velocity
(b)
10 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

(a) (b)

(c)

Figure 12. (a) Crank velocity, (b) control voltage and (c) velocity error for MSMC.

(a) (b)

Figure 13. (a) Crank velocity and (b) control voltage in the case of added mass of 0.5 kg.
Cxakar and Tanyıldızı
(a)
Figure 14. (a) Crank velocity and (b) control voltage in the case of unknown force.
was achieved in a short time that shows the efficiency
of the MSMC method.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: This study was supported by Scientific Research
Projects Coordination Unit of Firat University. Project
number: FÜBAP-1987.
ORCID iD
xakar
Orhan C https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6947-3875
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qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
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pp.190–197. New York: Curran Associates.
29. Paul B. Kinematics and dynamics of planar machinery. where ui and vi are the components of the velocity influ-
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1979.
ence coefficient of the mass centre of the link i and they
can be determined by differentiating the position vari-
ables of the mass centre of the links with respect to the
Appendix 1 independent variable q
The vector loop closure equation of the four-bar link-
age shown in Figure 1 can be written as dxi ∂xi X2
∂xi
ui ¼ = + gj
dq ∂q j=1
∂f j
A0 A + AB = A0 B0 + B0 B ð14Þ ð23Þ
dyi ∂yi X2
∂yi
This yields two explicit constraint equations as vi = = + gj
dq ∂q j=1
∂f j
follows
For the four-bar mechanism, the coordinates of the
f1 (q, f1 , f2 ) = r2 cos q + r3 cos f1  r1 cos b1  r4 cos f2 = 0
mass centre of the links are
f2 (q, f1 , f2 ) = r2 sin q + r3 sin f1  r1 sin b1  r4 sin f2 = 0
ð15Þ
Cxakar and Tanyıldızı 13

x2 = c2 cosðqÞ y2 = c2 sinðqÞ they can be determined by differentiating the velocity

x3 = r2 cosðqÞ + c3 cosðf1 Þ y3 = r2 sinðqÞ + c3 sinðf1 Þ influence coefficient of the mass centre of the links with
x4 = c4 cosðf2 Þ y4 = c4 sinðf2 Þ respect to the independent variable q
ð24Þ
and the velocity influence coefficients of the mass centre ∂ui X2
∂ui ∂vi X2
∂vi
of the links are determined as follows u0i = + gj ; v0i = + gj ð31Þ
∂q j=1
∂f j ∂q j=1
∂f j

u2 =  c2 sinðqÞ v2 = c2 cosðqÞ
For the four-bar mechanism, they are obtained as
u3 =  r2 sinðqÞ  c3 sinðf1 Þg1 v3 = r2 cosðqÞ + c3 cosðf1 Þg1
u4 =  c4 sinðf2 Þg2 v4 = c4 cosðf2 Þg2 follows
ð25Þ u02 =  c2 cosðqÞ
The acceleration influence coefficient or the second- v02 =  c2 sinðqÞ
order influence coefficient is the derivative of the velo- u03 =  r2 cosðqÞ  c3 cosðf1 Þg12  c3 sinðf1 Þg 01
city influence coefficient with respect to the independent ð32Þ
variable q, and it can be written as v03 =  r2 sinðqÞ  c3 sinðf1 Þg12 + c3 cosðf1 Þg01
u04 =  c4 cosðf2 Þg22  c4 sinðf2 Þg02
dgi d 2 fi ∂gi X
2
∂gi
gi0 = = = + gj ; i = 1, 2 ð26Þ v04 =  c4 sinðf2 Þg22 + c4 cosðf2 Þg 02
dq dq 2 ∂q ∂fj
j=1
Note that in equations (4–6) hi and h0i are the velo-
The acceleration influence coefficients of the four- city and acceleration influence coefficients related to
bar linkage are determined as follows the rotation of the links, respectively. For the four-bar
mechanism, hi and h0i (i = 2, 3, 4) are defined as follows
r2 cos (q  f2 ) r2 cos (f1  f2 ) sin (q  f2 )
g10 =  + g1
r3 sin (f1  f2 ) r3 sin2 (f1  f2 ) h2 = 1, h02 = 1
r2 sin (f1  q) h3 = g1 , h03 = g 01 ð33Þ
+ g2
r3 sin2 (f1  f2 )
h4 = g2 , h04 = g 02
ð27Þ
r2 cos (q  f1 ) r2 sin (q  f2 ) From equation (4), the equivalent mass moment of
g20 = + g1 inertia for the four-bar mechanism can be written as
r4 sin (f1  f2 ) r4 sin2 (f1  f2 )
ð28Þ  
r2 cos (f1  f2 ) sin (q  f1 ) = = m2 c22 + I2 + m3 r22 + c23 g12 + 2r2 c3 cosðq  f1 Þ
 g2
r4 sin2 (f1  f2 ) + I3 g12 + m4 c24 g22 + I4 g22
The angular acceleration of the links 3 and 4 can be cal- ð34Þ
culated as follows
and its derivative with respect to q divided by 2 which
€ 1 = g 0 q_ 2 + g1 €q;
f € 2 = g0 q_ 2 + g2 €q
f ð29Þ is named as the centripetal coefficient can be found as
1 2
follows
The acceleration of the mass centre of the link i (i = 2,
3, 4), aGi, can be calculated as follows 1 d=  
= m3 r2 c3 ðg1  1Þ sinðq  f1 Þ + m3 c23 + I3 g1 g 01
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 2 dq
02 02 2  
aGi = ui + vi q_ + u2i + v2i €q ð30Þ + m4 c24 + I4 g2 g02
ð35Þ
where ui and vi are the components of the acceleration
influence coefficient of the mass centre of the link i and