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Transactions on Energy Conversion
Composite Super-twisting Sliding Mode Control Design for PMSM
Speed Regulation Problem Based on a Novel Disturbance Observer
Qiankang Hou, Shihong Ding, Xinghuo Yu
Abstract—This paper aims to improve the performance of the
permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) speed regulation
system by combining a novel disturbance observer (DOB) with
the super-twisting sliding mode (STSM) technique. First, a STSM
controller is constructed to eliminate the adverse effects of the
lumped disturbance in the PMSM speed regulation system. A
novel DOB is introduced to estimate and compensate the lumped
unknown disturbance, which constitutes a composite controller
with a feedforward compensation term and a state-feedback
control. As a result, the gain of the composite sliding mode
controller can be significantly reduced, which will improve the
performance of the closed-loop PMSM speed regulation system.
The validity and robustness of the proposed composite control
scheme are fully verified by simulation and experimental results.
Index Terms—PMSM, disturbance observer, disturbance com-
pensation, sliding mode control.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The alternating current (AC) servo motor control problems
have been studied extensively in control theory. Among them,
the AC servo control system with PMSM as the controlled
object has become a research hotspot due to its wide appli-
cations in industry [1]. However, the existence of parameter
perturbations, system uncertainties and unavoidable external
disturbance in the PMSM speed regulation system results in
an unsatisfactory performance under the conventional linear
control methods [2], [3]. In recent years, various nonlinear
control methods have been applied to the PMSM speed regu-
lation system, such as fuzzy control [4], [5], robust control [6],
[7], finite-time control [8], [9], sliding mode control (SMC)
[10]–[12], predictive control [13], [14], etc. These methods
have improved the performances of the PMSM control system
from different aspects.
Among these nonlinear control methods, the SMC has been
considered as one of the most effective methods to deal with
the uncertain nonlinear systems due to its insensitivity to
uncertainties and disturbance [15], [16]. In order to further
Qiankang Hou is with the School of Electrical and Information En-
gineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang Jiangsu 212013, China. (e-mail:
houqiankang@hotmail.com).
Shihong Ding is with the School of Electrical and Information Engi-
neering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China, and also with the
High-Tech Key Laboratory of Agricultural Equipment and Intelligence of
Jiangsu Province, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China. (e-mail:
dsh@mail.ujs.edu.cn).
Xinghuo Yu is with the School of Engineering, RMIT University, Mel-
bourne, VIC. 3000, Australia. (e-mail: xinghuo.yu@rmit.edu.au)
* This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation
of China under Grant 61973142, the Jiangsu Natural Science Foundation
for Distinguished Young Scholars under Grant BK20180045, the Priority
Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions and
the Six Talent Peaks Project in Jiangsu Province under Grant XNYQC-006,
and in part by the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Program under
Grants DP200101197 and DP200101199. (Corresponding author: Shihong
Ding).
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improve dynamic performance of the PMSM speed regula-
tion system, several SMC schemes have been developed. A
novel exponential reaching law for the conventional SMC
was presented in [12] to suppress chattering problem, but
it increased the reaching time. To improve the convergence
and disturbance rejection performance, the terminal sliding
mode (TSM) control strategy was designed in [17], where
the tracking error can be steered to the origin in finite time
[18], [19]. However, it may have a singularity problem. To
further solve the singularity problem, the nonsingular TSM
control scheme for the PMSM control system was considered
in [20]. Additionally, the second-order sliding mode technique
was also applied to the field of motor control in [21].
However, in practical applications, the upper bound of
disturbance existing in the PMSM control system is usually
difficult to measure or estimate [22], [23]. As a result, the
gain of the sliding mode controller could be much large,
which would worsen the chattering phenomenon [24]. A
widely used approach to solve this problem is to use the
disturbance-observer-based feedforward compensation tech-
nique [10]. Feedforward compensation can enhance the ability
to resist disturbance in the PMSM control system, and thus
could improve the dynamic performance. The reason is that
the disturbance can be estimated and offset, so that a smaller
switching gain of SMC can be chosen [20]. It should be noted
that the basic point for the feedforward compensation control
is the design of the disturbance observer (DOB). Consequently,
much attention has been given to the theory of DOB. A
simple adaptive DOB was proposed in [25] to provide a
high-bandwidth disturbance estimation in the PMSM speed
regulation system. Later, a high-order terminal sliding mode
observer was employed in [26] to estimate the immeasurable
mechanical parameters of PMSM systems. Meanwhile, by
taking parameter fluctuations and external disturbance as the
lumped disturbance, a high-speed sliding mode observer was
also designed in [27] to ensure the robustness of the PMSM
control system. In addition, a modified version of DOB was
developed in [28], showing its superior to the conventional
DOB. As mentioned before, the key idea of the disturbance-
observer-based control is to design a DOB to estimate the
disturbance, and then the baseline feedback controller plus the
compensation term constitute a composite control scheme.
In this paper, by introducing a new DOB and combining
with the super-twisting sliding mode algorithm, a compos-
ite super-twisting SMC scheme is designed for the speed
regulation problem of the PMSM system. First, a super-
twisting sliding mode (STSM) controller is designed for the
PMSM system such that the motor speed will approach its
desired value in the presence of disturbance. Moreover, to
further improve the dynamic and steady-state performance
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Transactions on Energy Conversion
of the PMSM control system, a novel DOB is constructed
based on the inverse model of the PMSM speed regulation
system. It can be proved that the proposed DOB will well
estimate the lumped disturbance of the PMSM control system.
The estimated value plus the STSM state-feedback controller
constitutes the composite controller. Finally, a conventional
sliding mode controller is constructed to compare with the
composite controller. Simulation and experiment results are
given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.
The major contributions of this work can be summarized
in two aspects. On one hand, by preserving the discontin-
uous term in the derivative of the real controller, a STSM
controller is developed for the PMSM system, which can
reduce the inevitable chattering phenomenon in conventional
sliding mode controller. On the other hand, based on the
inverse model of PMSM speed regulation system, a novel
DOB is proposed to estimate the lumped disturbance. This
kind of disturbance observer only needs to tune the parameter
K to obtain its accuracy, which is more convenient than the
traditional observer.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives
the mathematical model of PMSM and problem formulation.
In Section 3, the design of the super-twisting controller is
first presented, and then a new DOB is given. Consequently,
the composite control scheme is eventually designed. Section
4 shows the simulation and experimental results. Finally,
conclusions are given in Section 5.
II. S YSTEM M ODELING AND P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
According to [20], the mathematical model of PMSM in the
d − q reference coordination can be given as follows
 di
 Ls dtd = −Rid + Pn Ls ωiq + Ud
di
L q = −Riq + Pn Ls ωid + Uq − Pn ϕf ω (1)
 sdωdt
J dt = −Bω + 1.5Pn ϕf iq − TL
where Uq is the stator voltage component on the q axis,
Ud is the stator voltage component on the d axis, iq is the
stator current component on the q axis, id is the stator current
component on the d axis, R is the stator resistance, TL is the
load torque, J is the moment of inertia, ω is the mechanical
angular velocity of the motor, B is the friction coefficient, Ls
is the stator inductance, ϕf is the flux linkage of the motor
and Pn is the number of pole pairs.
By a simple calculation, from (1), the relationship between
the angular velocity ω and the current iq can be written as
B kt
ω̇ = − ω + i∗q + d0 (t)
J J
where kt = 1.5Pn ϕf is the torque constant, i∗q is the reference
current of q axis, and d0 (t) = − TJL − kJt i∗q − iq can be

B
considered as the total disturbance.
The goal of this paper is to derive a new DOB such that a
composite control scheme can be developed in a combination
with the STSM control to further improve the control perfor-
mance of the PMSM speed regulation system.
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III. COMPOSITE CONTROLLER DESIGN
As mentioned before, the PMSM system is unavoidably
affected by various disturbances. The traditional proportional
integral derivative (PID) control is not easy to achieve a
satisfactory performance in the presence of some large distur-
bances. It is known that SMC is an effective method to obtain
the desired performance for PMSM system, though there is a
chattering problem. To fix this problem, we intend to design a
chattering-free sliding mode controller. In addition, the another
solution to improve the control performance of PMSM system
is the disturbance-observer-based control. The basic idea is
to design a DOB to estimate the disturbance, and then the
baseline feedback controller plus the compensation term forms
a composite control scheme. In this section, we design a
composite control scheme by combining the chattering-free
SMC technique and the disturbance observer to improve the
control performance for the PMSM system.
A. Design of Super-twisting Controller
For the speed regulation problem of the PMSM system, we
set ωr as the reference angular velocity. On this basis, the state
variable of speed error is defined as x1 = ω − ωr . From (2),
the dynamics of the PMSM speed regulation system can be
given as
ẋ1 = ax1 + bu + d(t) (3)
kt TL kt ∗
where a = − B B


J , b = J , d (t) = − J − J iq − iq − J ωr
can be denoted as the lumped disturbance, and u is the control
signal i∗q .
Assumption 1: The lumped disturbance d(t) is bounded, i.e.
there exists a positive constant D such that |d (t)| ≤ D.
Remark 1: It can be easily concluded that the load torque
TL , the current iq and i∗q , and the reference angular velocity ωr
are always bounded. Consequently, it implies that Assumption
1 is reasonable.
For PMSM speed regulation system (3), we design a super-
twisting controller as
1/2
u =−λ |x1 | sign (x1 ) + u1 ,
−u |u| > UM (4)
u̇1 =
−α · sign (x1 ) |u| ≤ UM
with UM > 0, λ > 0 and α > 0.
Then, we have the following theorem.
Theorem 1: Under the super-twisting sliding mode con-
troller (4), the speed error of PMSM system (3) will finite-
time converge to zero and the control u will enter the segment
[−UM , UM ] in finite time.
(2) Proof: In the following, we will use a geometric method
inspired by Theorem 4.5 in [29] to give the proof. If |u| > UM ,
1
calculating u̇ yields u̇ = − 21 λẋ1 |x1 |− 2 −u. In addition, we let
f (t, x1 ) = − J x1 + d(t), then system (3) can be rewritten as
ẋ1 = f (t, x1 ) + bu. Meanwhile, the parameters in the PMSM
mathematical model and the angular velocity ω are always
bounded. Due to the boundedness of the lumped disturbance
d(t) guaranteed by Assumption 1, it is reasonable to obtain
that f (t, x1 ) is bounded too.
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Since f (t, x1 ) is bounded and b is a positive constant, we x1

can obtain that there exists a q ∈ (0, 1) to ensure |f /b| < qUM .  0, x10 
Combining with ẋ1 = f (t, x1 ) + bu, we have  x2  M , x2  M   x2P , x2P 
 0, x2M 

ẋ1 u = bu2 + f u
≥ bu2 − |f | |u|  x2M ,0
   x1M ,0 x1
|f |
= b |u| |u| −
b
> b |u| (|u| − qUM ) 0, x20 
 x1 P , x1 P   x1M , x1M 
 0, x1M 
>0 2 C  1/ 2
x1       sign  x1   x1
 b 
(5)

with |u| > UM . Fig. 1. The phase plot of x1 − ẋ1 under super-twisting controller.
−1/2
Using (5), we have uu̇ = − 12 λ |x1 | ẋ1 u−u2 < 0, which
implies that u will move towards the segment [−UM , UM ].
The condition |ẋ1−M /ẋ1−0 | < 1 is sufficient for the
The following equation is satisfied with |u| ≤ UM , x1 6= 0:
algorithm convergence while |u| < UM . And this condition
1 ẋ1 can be rewritten as
ẍ1 = f˙ − b λ − bα · sign (x1 ) (6)
2 |x1 | 12
|ẋ1−M /ẋ1−0 | = |ẋ1−M |/|ẋ1−0 |
2 (C + bα)
Note that f (t, x1 ) is bounded, the condition f˙ ≤ C holds = p
at least locally. Hence, the equation can be rewritten in the λb 2 (bα − C)
Filippov sense as < 1.

1 |ẋ1 | Therefore, if we choose the parameter λ as

ẍ1 ∈ [−C, C] − b( λ + α · sign (x1 )) (7)
2 |x1 | 12 2 (bα + C)
λ> p (11)
It can be concluded from (7) that in the region {(x1 , ẋ1 ) : b 2 (bα − C)
x1 > 0, ẋ1 > 0}, the real trajectory is confined by the axes the condition |ẋ1−M /ẋ1−0 | < 1 holds automatically.
x1 = 0, ẋ1 = 0 and the trajectory of the equation ẍ1 = −(bα− Similar to what we did in the above steps, we show
C), as shown in Fig. 1. that the phase trajectory of system (3), (4) will inter-
Let (x1−M , 0) be the intersection of the curve ẍ1 = sect the axes x1 = 0, ẋ1 =
0 and the switching
−(bα − C) with the axis ẋ1 = 0, and (0, ẋ1−0 ) being the 1/2
line |ẋ1 | = − λ2 Cb + α · sign (x1 ) |x1 | at the points
intersection of the curve ẍ1 = −(bα−C) with the axis x1 = 0. (0, ẋi−0 ), (xi−M , 0) and (xi−P ,p ẋi−P ) , i = 2, 3, · · ·. There-
According to the standard form equation for parabolas, the fore, when λ > 2 (bα + C) /b 2 (bα − C), the condition
phase trajectory of system (3), (4) in the worst case can be |ẋi−M /ẋi−0 |, i = 2, 3, · · · can be established. This implies
expressed by that the phase trajectory of system (3), (4) will convergence to
ẋ2
zero. Meanwhile, when |u| ≤ UM , the closed-loop system (3),
x1 = − 2(bα−C)
1
+ x1−M (4) has a negative degree of homogeneity, which implies that
ẋ21−0 (8)
x1−M = it is finite-time convergent guaranteed by finite-time Lyapunov
2(bα−C)
theory.
So, we can obtain
p 1/2 Remark 2: The basic idea of super-twisting controller is
ẋ1−0 = 2 (bα − C)x1−M (9) to preserve discontinuous term in the derivative of the real
controller. In this case, the real controller will be an integration
Next, the phase trajectory will move from point (x1−M , 0)
of the discontinuous signal, and thus it will not only keep the
and along curve (8) until it arrives at the point (x1−P , ẋ1−P ),
strong robustness of the conventional sliding mode controllers,
which is the intersection of curve (8) with the switching line
1/2 but also possess the continuous property.
|ẋ1 | = − λ2 Cb + α · sign (x1 ) |x1 | . Make a vertical line at

point (x1−M , 0) and intersect with the switching line |ẋ1 | =

1/2 B. Design of Composite Super-Twisting Controller
− λ2 Cb + α · sign (x1 ) |x1 |


at the point (x1−M , ẋ1−M ).
Based on the fact that ẋ1−M < 0, we have SMC is essentially a kind of switching control, which uses
discontinuous terms to restrict the influence from various
2 C 1
ẋ1−M = − ( + α)x1−M
2
(10) disturbances. As a matter of fact, the high control gains are
λ b often chosen to resist various large disturbances, which may
It is easy to see from Fig. 1 that in the region {(x1 , ẋ1 ) : affect the performance of the PMSM speed regulation system.
x1 > 0, ẋ1 < 0}, the real trajectory is confined by the axes If we can use an observer to estimate the disturbance, then
x1 = x1−M , ẋ1 = ẋ1−M . the disturbance could be compensated by using a feedforward

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term. Under this circumstance, the performance of the PMSM r + x1 Super-twisting + 𝑖𝑞 ∗

Decoupled Inverter
speed regulation system may be significantly improved. In this -
Controller
- 𝑖𝑑 ∗ = 0 Current PI SVPWM
Controller
subsection, we first build a new DOB, which can be utilized
1/ b
to estimate the disturbance of the PMSM speed regulation θ
system. After that, by a combination with the super-twisting dˆ 𝑖𝑞 i𝑎
Novel Disturbance d,q
controller and the estimated value, a composite controller will Observer 𝑖𝑑 i𝑏
a,b,c
be constructed.
First, we will construct the new DOB, shown as in Fig. 2.
According to Fig. 2, the DOB can be expressed as  Calculation of Velocity
and Angle
Encoder PMSM
ˆ = b · (h − u)
d(t) (12)
where Fig. 3. The control diagram of PMSM system.
h = K(x1 − y1 ) (13)
and y1 is the output of the auxiliary system which is construct- With Eq. (3) in mind, we can directly obtain from (20) that
ed as bh = bu + d(t), which implies that h → u + d(t) b . Therefore,
it can be concluded that the disturbance d(t)
can be estimated
ẏ1 = ay1 + bh (14)
as dˆ(t) = b (h − u), i.e. dˆ(t) = kJt h − i∗q .
with a and b being defined the same as in (3).
Finally, combining with the novel DOB (12)-(14) and
d t  the control law (4), the composite STSM controller can be
PMSM Speed
Regulation System
x1 d̂  t 
designed as
u h
x1  ax1  bu  d t  K b 1/2 ˆ
- y - u = −λ
 |x1 | sign (x1 ) + u1 − d(t)
b ,
1
−u |u| > UM (21)
y1  ay1  bh u̇1 =
Auxiliary −α · sign (x1 ) |u| ≤ UM
System
The principle diagram of the PMSM vector control is shown
in Fig. 3.
Disturbance Observer
Remark 3: Based on the aforementioned analysis, it is
obvious that larger value of the parameter K can provide better
Fig. 2. Block diagram of the new disturbance observer. disturbance rejection property and smaller estimation error.
However, increasing K may affect the dynamic performance
Then, we have the following result. of the PMSM system in practical applications. This implies
Theorem 2: If the DOB is constructed as (12)-(14) and the that some suitable parameter K should be selected to make a
parameter K is large enough, the estimate dˆ(t) will converge compromise adjustment catering for the system performance.
to the disturbance d (t). A basic rule for adjusting the parameter K is to adjust K
Proof: From (13), we have from an initial small value to a larger one until the system
performance requirements are satisfied.
ḣ = K(ẋ1 − ẏ1 ) (15) Remark 4: Pulsating torque in PMSM system is usually
By the auxiliary system (14), it can be easily obtain that generated by many different factors, such as reluctance torque,
mutual torque and direct current (DC) offsets. Meanwhile,
ḣ = K(ẋ1 − ay1 − bh) (16) some ripple minimization approaches have been designed or
h
Note from (13) that y1 = x1 − K . This, together with (16), implemented to suppress ripple [30]. These methods may be
implies employed to reduce the ripple existing in the proposed PMSM
system.
ḣ = K (ẋ1 − bh − a(x1 − h/K))
= K(ẋ1 − bh − ax1 ) + ah (17) IV. SIMULATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS
Eq. (17) can also be rewritten as In order to verify the performance of the proposed algo-
rithm, a conventional sliding mode controller is used to make
ḣ − ah = K(ẋ1 − bh − ax1 ) (18) a comparison with the proposed controller. Some simulation
Both sides of (18) divided by K(ḣ − ah), we can obtain and experimental studies have been done and the specification
of PMSM used in this section is shown in Table I.
ẋ1 − ax1 bh 1
− = (19) According to the conventional sliding mode theory, The
ḣ − ah ḣ − ah K sliding mode surface is chosen as
When the parameter K tends to infinity, one has Z t
s=c x1 dt + x1 (22)
ẋ1 = ax1 + bh (20) 0

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TABLE I
SPECIFICATION OF THE PMSM 612
608 SMC control
STSM control
Rated power 0.75KW 604

Speed (rpm)
Rated speed 3000r/min
Friction coefficient 0.0001N · m · s 600
Rotor flux linkage 0.16wb 596
Moment of inertia 0.0021kg/m2
592
Stator inductance 4.5mH
Number of poles 4 588
584
0.17 0.18 0.19 0.2 0.21 0.22 0.23 0.24 0.25
700 2.8

600 2.4
2

Current iq (A)
500
1.6
Speed (rpm)

400 1.2
300 0.8
0.4
200
SMC control 0
100 STSM control -0.4
0.17 0.18 0.19 0.2 0.21 0.22 0.23 0.24 0.25
0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 Time (sec)
Time (sec)
Fig. 5. Responses with a sudden load under STSM controller (4) and SMC
Fig. 4. Step responses of PMSM system under STSM controller (4) and controller (24).
SMC controller (24).

From (3) and (22), we can obtain that 3

Estimated value

ṡ = cx1 + ẋ1 = ax1 + bu + cx1 + d(t) (23) 2

Hence, the conventional sliding mode controller is designed 1 K=5

K = 10
as K = 20
0 Reference
1
u = − (a + c) x1 − k · sign (s) (24) -1
b 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35
where k > 0 is the switching gain. 4
Estimated error

2
A. Simulation Results
0
To make a fair comparison, a basic rule is that the param- 0
eters of the proposed controllers can be arbitrarily tuned to -0.5
-2
achieve their best performance. The switching gain of SMC -1
0.2 0.205 0.21
controller (24) is chosen as k = 300 and the parameters of -4
STSM controller (4) are chosen as α = 400 and λ= 3. In 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35
Time (sec)
addition, no matter which controller is used in the speed-loops,
the proportional integral (PI) parameters of both current-loops
Fig. 6. Time response of dˆ(t) and estimated error under DOB (12)-(14).
are the same in the simulation. The proportional and integral
gains are kp = 14 and ki = 1500, respectively. The reference
speed is 600 rpm.
The load torque is initially set to zero, and the speed According to the theoretical analysis, the estimated value of
responses of the PMSM speed regulation system from 0 to the disturbance given by DOB (12)-(14) is closer to the real
600 rpm is shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen from Fig. 4 that load disturbance if the gain K is tuned to be large enough. To
the step response under both controllers (4) and (24) are good, verify this property, the simulation result is given in Fig. 6.
while the STMC controller provides a shorter settling time and It can be seen from Fig. 6 that the larger K implies smaller
a smaller overshoot. error, which indicates that the simulation result accords with
When the motor operates stably at a speed of 600 rpm, a the theoretical analysis.
disturbance load torque TL = 2.2N ·m is added at t = 0.2 s to To verify the effectiveness of the proposed composite STSM
test the disturbance rejection property. The simulation results control method, we continue to carry out the simulation
are depicted in Fig. 5. It can be observed that the PMSM by comparing the STSM controller (4) and the composite
speed regulation system under the STSM control algorithm controller (21). The parameters of the STSM controller (4) are
has a better load disturbance rejection ability when the load α = 400 and λ= 3. The parameters of composite controller
torque is loaded or unloaded suddenly. (21) are α = 200 and λ= 3, while the parameter of DOB is

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612
608 STSM + DOB control
STSM control
Speed (rpm)

604
600
596
592
588
584
0.17 0.18 0.19 0.2 0.21 0.22 0.23 0.24 0.25
2.8
Fig. 10. Experimental bench
2.4
2
Current iq (A)

1.6
Moreover, the speed responses under different parameter K
1.2
of the DOB (12)-(14) are also demonstrated in Fig. 8. It can
0.8
0.4
be clearly observed from Fig. 8 that the larger value of K
0
provides better disturbance rejection property. In addition, the
-0.4 intuitive anti-disturbance performance comparisons among the
0.17 0.18 0.19 0.2 0.21 0.22 0.23 0.24 0.25 three control schemes are shown in Fig. 9. This also implies
Time (sec)
that the simulation results concur with the theoretical analysis.
Fig. 7. Responses with a sudden load under STSM controller (4) and
composite controller (21). B. Experimental Verification
To further investigate the effectiveness of the proposed DOB
608 (12)-(14) and the STSM control schemes, some real time ex-
606 K = 20 periments are carried out. The new DOB is applied to PMSM
K = 10
604 K=5 speed regulation problem to improve system performance. The
602 theory of DOB is implemented in TMS320F28335 digital
600
control board by using C-Program, and the experimental
598
platform is shown in Fig. 10. The PMSM is driven by a
599 three-phase pulse width modulation (PWM) inverter with an
596 598
597 intelligent power module (IPM) with a switching frequency of
594
0.202 0.204 10 kHz. In the experiment, the load is generated by a magnetic
592
0.18 0.19 0.2 0.21 0.22 0.23 0.24 powder brake, and its output torque can be regulated by tuning
Time (sec)
the excitation current.
We first compare the system performance under the SMC
Fig. 8. Robustness for the speed regulation under different K.
and the STSM control schemes. The PI parameters of the both
current loops are the same, i.e. kp = 24 and ki = 2500. The
parameters of the STSM controller (4) and the SMC controller
chosen as K = 10. Simulation results of antiload disturbance (24) are the same as those in the simulation. Here we set
are shown in Fig. 7. When the same disturbance load is added, the excitation current of magnetic powder brake as 0.08A
we can find from Fig. 7 that the composite controller has a generating the braking torque with 2N ·m under the speed 600
better performance than STSM controller, and the maximum rpm. The results of the experiment are shown in Figs. 11-12. It
fluctuation is smaller and recovering time is shorter. At the can be seen from Fig. 11 that the STSM controller (4) shows
same time, the steady fluctuation of the current iq under the a smaller overshoot and a shorter settling time. Fig. 12 show
composite controller is reduced due to the smaller switching that the STSM control method exhibits a better disturbance
gain. rejection property. When the disturbance load is added, it can
also be observed that the speed response of PMSM system
12 11.1
under STSM control scheme has smaller fluctuation.
In order to demonstrate the performance of composite
10
control method, we compare the system performance under
Speed decrease (rpm)

8
8 the STSM and the composite control schemes. The parameters
6
of the STSM controller (4) are chosen as α = 400 and λ= 3.
The parameters of composite controller (21) are chosen as
4 α = 250 and λ= 3, while the parameter of DOB is chosen
2.8 2.5
2.1
2 as K = 10. The experiment results are shown in Fig. 13.
Although the composite controller has a smaller switching
0
SMC STSM K=5 K=10 K=20 gain, the maximum speed fluctuation of the composite control
method is much smaller than that under the STSM control
Fig. 9. Anti-disturbance performance comparisons. method. In addition, it can be easily observed that the steady

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Transactions on Energy Conversion

700
620
600
Sundden
Speed (rpm)

500 610 load

Speed (rpm)
400 600
300
590
200 STSM control
STSM + DOB control
STSM control 580
100
SMC control
0 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 1.5
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
Time (sec) 3
2.5

Current iq (A)
Fig. 11. Step responses of PMSM system under STSM controller (4) and 2
SMC controller (24) (experiment). Sundden
1.5 load
1
630 0.5
620 Sudden 0
load 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 1.5
Speed (rpm)

610 Time (sec)

600
Fig. 13. Responses with a sudden load under STSM controller (4) and
590 composite controller (21) (experiment).
STSM control
580
SMC control
570
0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 1.5 615
3.5
610
3
605
Current iq (A)

2.5
Speed (rpm)

2
600
Sudden
1.5 load 595
1 2 590
K = 20
0.5 1.5 K = 10
585
1 1.1 1.2 K=5
0
0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 1.5 580
Time (sec) 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 1.5
Time (sec)

Fig. 12. Responses with a sudden load under STSM controller (4) and SMC
Fig. 14. Speed responses under different K (experiment).
controller (24) (experiment).

K = 20
fluctuation of the current iq under the composite controller is K = 10
Estimate value

2
reduced due to the smaller switching gain. K=5

According to theoretical analysis, the disturbance rejection 1

property of the DOB (12)-(14) mainly depends on the value
of the parameter K. In order to verify the influence of 0
different numerical gain K of the DOB (12)-(14), we select the
different values K = 5, 10, 20 to observe the speed waveform -1
0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45
respectively. It can been seen clearly from Figs. 14-15 that
the larger values of K produce better disturbance rejection 2
property and smaller values of the estimated error. Moreover,
Estimate error

1
the anti-disturbance performance comparisons among the three
control schemes are shown in Fig. 16. 0

To further verify the robustness of the PMSM speed regula- -1

tion system, Figs. 17-18 demonstrate the experimental results
when the motor is operating in the higher speed region. The -2

parameters of STSM controller (4) and composite controller 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45
(21) are the same as those in the 600 rpm case. It is obvious Time (sec)
that these two controllers are still effective in a high-speed
operating environment. Furthermore, the composite controller Fig. 15. Time response of dˆ(t) and estimated error for the novel DOB
(12)-(14) (experiment).
has better performance in most cases.

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Transactions on Energy Conversion

25 V. CONCLUSIONS
19.8 In this paper, a novel DOB theory has been proposed,
Speed decrease (rpm) 20
which combines with the mathematical model of PMSM to
15 13.1 construct a novel DOB for PMSM speed regulation system.
Through disturbance estimation of the novel DOB for feed-
10 9.2
forward compensation, the capability of anti-disturbance has
6.1 5.6 been enhanced for PMSM control system, which can help
5
reduce the switching gain of sliding mode control without
0 sacrificing disturbance rejection performance. A composite
SMC STSM K=5 K=10 K=20
control method based on the novel DOB (super-twisting con-
Fig. 16. Anti-disturbance performance comparisons (experiment).
trol+DOB) can have better performance when load disturbance
change suddenly in PMSM control system. Simultaneously,
the influence of the gain K of the proposed DOB has been
1300 verified by simulations and experiments. Both simulations and
experiments have shown the effectiveness of the proposed
1200
scheme.
Speed (rpm)

1100

1000
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Shihong Ding (M’12) was born in Anhui, China, in
1983. He received the B.E. degree in mathematics
from Anhui Normal University, China, in 2004, and
the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in automatic control
from Southeast University, China, in 2007 and 2010,
respectively. During the graduate studies, he visited
The University of Texas at San Antonio from August
2008 to August 2009. After graduation, he held a
research fellowship with the University of Western
Sydney for one year. He also visited Yeungnam Uni-
versity, South Korea, from July 2018 to August 2018
and RMIT University, from December 2019 to February 2020, respectively.
Since June 2010, he has been with the School of Electrical and Information
Engineering, Jiangsu University, where he is currently a Full Professor. His
research interests include sliding mode control and finite-time stability. He
currently serves as a Subject Editor of Nonlinear Dynamics and an Associate
Editor of IEEE ACCESS.
Xinghuo Yu (M’92-SM’98-F’08) received BEng
and MEng degrees in Electrical and Electronic
Engineering from the University of Science and
Technology of China, Hefei, China, in 1982 and
1984, and PhD degree in Control Science and Engi-
neering from Southeast University, Nanjing, China
in 1988, respectively. He is an Associate Deputy
Vice-Chancellor and a Distinguished Professor at
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT
University), Melbourne, Australia.
His research interests include control systems,
complex and intelligent systems, and smart energy systems. He has served
as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE
Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers, IEEE Transactions
on Industrial Electronics and IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.
He received a number of awards and honors for his contributions, including
2013 Dr.-Ing. Eugene Mittelmann Achievement Award of IEEE Industrial
Electronics Society, 2018 M A Sargent Medal from Engineers Australia
and 2018 Austalasian AI Distinguished Research Contribution Award from
Australian Computer Society. He is the Junior Past President of IEEE
Industrial Electronics Society for 2020 and 2021.

Qiankang Hou was born in Jiangsu, China, in 1995.

He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree
in control science and engineering in the School
of Electrical and Information Engineering, Jiangsu
University, Zhenjiang, China. His research interests
include nonlinear control and its application to per-
manent magnet synchronous motor servo systems.

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