Control Tutorials for MATLAB and Simulink - Time-response Analysi... file:///D:/DATA/Automatique/Automatique/TP%20asss/Travaux%20A...

Diode

Transistor (MOSFET)

Jumper wires

In this activity we will model a simple DC motor for an input of armature

voltage and an output of rotational speed. The motor's angular position

(and in turn its speed) is determined by a quadrature encoder. The

encoder pulses are counted on the Arduino board via two of the board's

Digital Inputs (each digital channel can be either an input or an output).

The Arduino board is also used for controlling the speed of the motor.

Specifically, one of the board's Digital Outputs is employed to switch a

transistor on and off, thereby connecting and disconnecting the motor to

a DC Voltage source. The Arduino board will also communicate the

recorded data to Simulink for visualization and analysis. The logic for

estimating the motor's speed based on encoder counts is implemented

within Simulink. In Part (b), the logic for controlling the motor's speed will

also be implemented in Simulink.

Purpose

The purpose of this activity is to build intuition regarding the operation of

an armature-controlled DC motor. The activity also generates a blackbox

model for the motor based on its step response. This type of model is

compared to a physics-based model, the details of which can be found

here.

Modeling from first principles

In order to generate a physics-based model of the motor, we need to

consider a simplified version of its workings. The following figure

represents an electric equivalent circuit of the armature and the free-

body diagram of the rotor.

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For this example, we will treat the voltage source (V) applied to the

motor's armature as the input, and the rotational speed of the shaft

as the output. For modeling purposes, the rotor and shaft are

assumed to be rigid. We further assume a viscous friction model, that is,

that the friction torque is proportional to shaft angular velocity.

The following variables represent the physical parameters of the motor.

(J) moment of inertia of the rotor

(b) motor viscous friction constant

(Ke) electromotive force constant

(Kt) motor torque constant

(R) armature resistance

(L) armature inductance

Based on the above assumptions, we arrive at the following transfer

function model of a DC motor where the variable K represents both the

motor torque constant and the back emf constant (since the two

constants are equal when consistent units are employed). For the details

of the derivation of this model, please refer to the DC Motor Speed:

System Modeling page.

(1)

Time response experiment

In this experiment we will generate a model for an armature-controlled

DC motor based on its step response. Therefore, we will generate a

model for the motor based on its observed response, without

considering the underlying physics of the motor. This is sometimes

referred to as a blackbox model or a data-driven model. After we have

generated such a model, we will attempt to explain what we have

observed based on our understanding of the underlying physics. In this

process we will learn how to interface with a DC motor equipped with a

quadrature encoder.

Hardware setup

In this experiment we will control our motor through one the board's

digital outputs. Since the board cannot supply enough current (only

about 40 milliamps) to drive most motors directly, we will use the low-

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power signal from the board to connect and disconnect the motor to a

higher-power source, i.e. a battery. Specifically, the digital output will be

used to switch a transistor on and off. When the transistor is turned "on"

it will behave like a closed switch thereby completing the circuit and

causing the motor to spin. When the transistor is turned "off" it will act

like an open switch such that current won't flow through the circuit and

the motor will coast to rest. Since the motor is an inductive load, when

we attempt to switch the motor off and it continues to spin (due to its

inertia) the motor will generate a back emf (a voltage). This back emf

can damage our transistor. In order to prevent this back emf from

causing damage, we will put a "flyback" diode in parallel with our motor.

The diode will only allow current to flow in one direction, thereby

protecting the rest of the circuit.

In the schematic shown, we employ a power MOSFET where the board

drives the Gate pin. When voltage is supplied to the Gate, it closes the

circuit between the Source and Drain pins. One possible choice of power

MOSFET is the IRF1520 whose datasheet can be found here. For our

diode, we will employ the general purpose 1N4007 whose datasheet can

be found here.

We are able to achieve approximately continuous control of the motor's

speed using only a DC source by employing Pulse-Width Modulation

(PWM). Recall, a PWM approach alternately turns the motor "on" and

"off". Since the motor has dynamics (inertia, friction, etc.), it doesn't

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instantaneously reach top speed when turned on and doesn't

immediately come to a stop when turned off. It takes time for the motor

to react. This can be used to our advantage if the PWM frequency is

sufficiently fast. It's as if the motor is filtering the PWM command. In this

way, the speed of the motor can be controlled continuously by varying

the percent of time the PWM signal is on compared to the overall period

(the duty cycle). Further details on PWM can be found in Activity 1b and

Activity 4.

We will also employ the Arduino board for sensing the position/speed of

the motor. There are different means for achieving this with one of the

most popular being the optical encoder. An optical encoder consists of

an emitter (a light source, like an LED) and a detector (a

phototransistor). Within an encoder there is a piece of material that

alternately blocks and passes light as the material is passed between

the emitter/detector pair. When the phototransistor detects the light its

output goes high, and when it doesn't detect light its output goes low. By

counting these pulses, the sensor indicates the displacement of the

material between the emitter and detector. Furthermore, by timing the

frequency of these pulses, the sensor can be used to indicate speed.

By employing two emitter/detector pairs that are slightly offset, the

optical encoder can also be used to determine the direction of motion. In

the following rotary example, when the disk is rotating counterclockwise

the disk will encounter Pair A first and Pair B second, thereby causing

channel A to go low before channel B goes low. When the disk is

rotating clockwise, then channel B will go low first. This type of

configuration is typical of what is referred to as quadrature.

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Another commonly employed transducer is a Hall-effect sensor. A Hall-

effect sensor is able to detect a magnetic field. By detecting the passing

of gear teeth or a magnet, the Hall-effect sensor can generate a pulse-

train output similar to that produced by an optical encoder. Furthermore,

employing offset Hall-effect sensors can generate a quadrature output

for determining the direction of motion.

One motor with Hall-effect encoder that could be used for this activity

can be found here, though there are many other choices. This particular

motor can be driven by a 6-V lantern type battery. The encoder provides

48 counts per revolution (if you count both rising and falling edges). The

motor also includes a gearbox so that the Hall-effect sensor generates

1633 counts per revolution at the output shaft of the gearbox. A version

of this motor can be purchased without the gearbox for less money here.

Various accessories for the motor (brackets, wheels, etc.) can be found

from the same website. The setup of the motor with encoder and its

connection to the Arduino board is shown below. The color band on the

diode indicates its cathode. The Gate, Source, and Drain pins of the

MOSFET can be deduced from its orientation in the given figure.

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Software setup

In this experiment, we will employ Simulink to control the motor through

the switching of the transistor, to read the encoder output, and to plot the

data in real time. In particular, we will employ the IO package from the

MathWorks. For details on how to use the IO package, refer to the

following link. We will build the Simulink model for this activity in a step-

by-step manner in order to explain the nuances of using quadrature

encoder output for sensing the motor's speed.

To begin, we will construct a model as shown below where you may

need to change the port to which the Arduino board is connected (the

port is COM4 in this case). The Pulse Generator block toggles between

0 and 1 and is connected to the Digital Write Block to switch the

transistor between its OFF state and its ON state, respectively. Double-

clicking the Pulse Generator block we set the Sample time equal to

"0.02". In the downloadable model, the sample time is set to the variable

Ts which needs to be defined in the MATLAB workspace by typing Ts =

0.02 before the model can be run. We will also define the Pulse type to

be Sample based with a Period of "28/Ts" samples (28 seconds) and a

Pulse width of "26/Ts" samples (26 seconds) and a Phase delay of

"2/Ts" samples (2 seconds).

As the gate of the MOSFET is triggered from Digital Output 5, the Digital

Write block needs to be set to the corresponding pin. Specifically,

double-clicking on the block allows us to set the Pin to 5 from the drop-

down menu. We will leave the Sample time as "-1" to inherit the value

from the Pulse Generator block. The Encoder Read block is used for

reading the quadrature encoder signal. The encoder pulses are counted

via the program running on the Arduino board. The Encoder Read block

polls the board every sample period to get the latest number of counts

that have been accumulated. Double-clicking on the Encoder Read

block, we will leave the Encoder Number as "1" (we only have one

encoder so it doesn't matter). We will also set Pin A to "2" and Pin B to

"3". These correspond to the pins to which we connected the quadrature

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encoder signals. For the Arduino Uno, this is the only option. For the

Mega, for example, we could also use pins 18 and 19, or pins 20 and 21.

The Sample time is again set to "0.02". Finally, we connect the output of

the Encoder Read block to a Scope and a To Workspace block.

The Arduino Digital Write block, the Encoder Read block, the Arduino IO

Setup block, and the Real-Time Pacer block are all part of the IO

package. The remaining blocks are part of the standard Simulink library,

specifically, they can be found under the Sources and Sinks libraries.

Running the above model for 30 seconds generates the figure shown

below of encoder counts versus time. Examination of the figure shows

that motor is initially at rest (number of counts aren't changing), then

after 2 seconds the motor is turned on (the transistor is switched on) and

the number of encoder counts increments as the motor spins. If the

motor was spinning in the opposite direction, the encoder counts would

decrement. Notice that around an elapsed time of 16 seconds, the

number of encoder counts "rolls over." This happens because the buffer

that is keeping track of the number of counts can only represent

numbers between -32768 and 32767 (i.e. it uses 16-bits, 15 bits for the

number and 1 bit for the sign).

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Since we ultimately wish to estimate the motor's speed based on these

counts, we somehow need to address this rollover. Specifically, we will

construct the subsystem "Rollover" shown in the model below.

This subsystem compares the current number of counts to the number

of counts from the previous sample in order to determine whether a

rollover has occurred (at 32767 or at -32768) and then modifies the

accumulated number of counts to remove the rollover. Looking within the

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rollover subsystem, shown below, you can inspect the logic used for

correcting the accumulated number of counts.

If we re-run our Simulink model with the rollover correction, we now get

the following response of encoder counts as a function of time.

Next we wish to estimate the motor's speed based on the encoder

counts by adding the following elements to our Simulink model. Since

the encoder counts indicate the motor's position, we can approximate

the motor's speed over a specific interval of time as the change in the

motor's position divided by the change in time between samples. In

essence, this is the motor's average speed over that time interval.

Specifically, the Difference block computes the motor's change in

position (in counts) and the first Gain block divides by the sample time.

Subsequent Gain blocks convert the units from counts/sec to

revolutions/sec, and then from revolutions/sec to revolutions/min. The

constant representing the gear ratio needs to be defined in the MATLAB

workspace before the model can be run. For the motor described above,

we would type GR = 1/1633; at the command line.

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Reducing the length of the simulation then running the model generates

the following output for motor speed in RPM.

Examining the above, we can see that the estimate for motor speed is

quite noisy. This arises for several reasons: the speed of the motor is

actually varying, encoder counts are being periodically missed, the

timing at which the board is polled doesn't exactly match the prescribed

sampling time, and there is quantization associated with reading the

encoder. In order to reduce the effect of noise, we can increase the

sampling period and can add a filter to "smooth" the motor speed

estimate. Consider the following model with a simple first-order filter

added to the motor speed estimate. This model can be downloaded

here.

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Running this model with the sample time increased to 0.05 seconds and

a filter time constant of 0.15 seconds produces the following time trace

for the motor speed. Make sure to define the necessary variables at the

command line before running the model, Ts = 0.05;

filter_constant = 0.15;.

By increasing the sampling period and adding the filter, the speed

estimate indeed is much less noisy. This is especially helpful for

improving the estimate of the motor's speed when it is running at a

steady speed. A drawback of the filtering, however, is that it adds delay.

This can be seen by looking at the estimate with and without filtering at

the point at which the input is "turned on." The filtered output lags behind

the unfiltered input. In essence we have lost information about the

motor's actual response. In this case, this makes identifying a model for

the motor more challenging. In the case of feedback control, this lag can

degrade the performance of the closed-loop system. Reducing the time

constant of the filter will reduce this lag, but the tradeoff is that the noise

won't be filtered as well.

In this activity we are attempting to infer a model for the motor based on

its observed response. Considering that our input is a 6-Volt step, the

observed response appears to have the form of a first-order step

response. Looking at the filtered speed, the DC gain for the system is

then approximately 170 RPM/ 6 Volts 28 RPM/V. In order to estimate

the time constant, however, we need reduce the filtering in order to

better see the true speed of the motor. Looking at the unfiltered data,

and reducing the sample time to 0.01 seconds, we get the following

speed response.

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Recalling that a time constant defines the time it takes a process to

achieve 63.2% of its total change, we can estimate the time constant

from the above graph. We will attempt to "eye-ball" a fitted line to the

motor's response graph. This too is like adding a filter, but since it

doesn't have to occur in real-time, we can use future data (as well as

past data) to avoid the introduction of lag. Assuming the same steady-

state performance observed in the more heavily filtered data, we can

estimate the time constant based on the time it takes the motor speed to

reach RPM. Since this appears to occur at 1.06

seconds and the input appears to step at 1.02 seconds, we can estimate

the motor's time constant to be approximately 0.04 seconds. Therefore,

our blackbox model for the motor is the following.

(2)

Recalling the model of the motor we derived from first principles,

repeated below. We can see that we anticipated a second-order model,

but the response looks more like a first-order model. The explanation is

that the motor is overdamped (poles are real) and that one of the poles

dominates the response. This is typical of a DC motor where the

mechanical dynamics are much slower than the electrical dynamics, and

hence dominate the response.

(3)

In addition to the fact that our model is reduced-order, the model is a

further approximation of the real world in that it neglects nonlinear

aspects of the true physical motor. Based on our linear model, the

motor's output should scale with inputs of different magnitudes. For

example, the response of the motor to a 6-Volt step should have the

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same shape as its response to a 1-V step, just scaled by a factor of 6. In

reality, however, if the applied voltage is sufficiently small, the motor

won't move at all. This is due to the stiction in the motor. If the motor

torque isn't large enough, the motor cannot "break free" of the stiction.

This nonlinear behavior is not captured in our model. Typically, we use a

viscous friction model that is linearly proportional to speed, rather than a

Coulomb friction model that captures this stiction.

Extensions

Some extensions to this activity would be to try to identify the individual

parameters of the motor. You could then compare the predictive ability of

the physics-based model to the blackbox model. Another exercise would

be to generate a blackbox model for the motor based on its frequency

response, similar to what was done with the boost converter in Activity

5b. An advantage of using a frequency response approach to

identification is that it enables identification of the non-dominant

dynamics. In this case, however, those dynamics would need to be

slower (or the measuring system faster) in order to identify them.

In Part (b) of this activity, we design a PI controller for the motor.

Published with MATLAB® 8.2

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