Magnetic Levitation System

Modern Control Systems

Phase 2
Prof. Kebriaei
January 26, 2023

Shiva Shakeri

1
 Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. State-Feedback 4

3. State-Feedback with Additive Disturbance 9

4. Tracker using State-Feedback with Integral Action 10

5. Observer 13

6. Reduced Order Observer 15

7. Non-Linear Model Control 16

2
 1. Introduction
Magnetic levitation system is known as electro-mechanical systems in which an object is
levitate in speci c region without using any support. Now a days this technology is spreading
over a wide range because of its contact-less and friction-less properties as it removes energy
losses which occur due to friction. Since this technology was developed, researchers have
analyzed a large number of such systems. In the analysis of such systems most of the work has
been done on designing of controller as they require appropriate control action and are more
complex, such as State space controller, feedback linearization is used to control the position of
ball. However, there are mostly highly non-linear systems and open loop unstable. This
nonlinearity and unstability feature of magnetic levitation systems makes their control and
modeling very challenging.

The problem of controlling the magnetic eld by control method is taken up to levitate a metal
hollow sphere, here. The control problem is to supply controlled position of the ball such that the
magnetic force on the levitated body and gravitational force acting on it are exactly equal. Thus
the magnetic levitation system is inherently unstable without any control action.

The objective of the work can be directed to design controller considering the linear model as
well as nonlinear model. The controller designed is validated by simulating and implementing on
real time system.

3
fi
fi
 2. State-Feedback
“Intuitively, the state may be regarded as a kind of information storage or memory or
accumulation of past causes. We must, of course, demand that the set of internal states Σ be
sufficiently rich to carry all information about the past history of Σ to predict the effect of the
past upon the future. We do not insist, however, that the state is the least such information
although this is often a convenient assumption.”
R. E. Kalman, P. L. Falb and M. A. Arbib, 1969

State feedback, or pole placement, is a method employed in feedback control system theory
to place the closed-loop poles of a plant in pre-determined locations in the s-plane. Placing poles
is desirable because the location of the poles corresponds directly to the eigenvalues of the
system, which control the characteristics of the response of the system. The system must be
considered controllable in order to implement this method. We have checked the controllability
of the system in the first phase of this project. Therefore this method can be implemented on this
system. The block diagram of state-feedback in a system is shown in Fig. 1.

Figure. 1. State Feedback Block Diagram

2.1. Stability Analysis

First, system’s poles should be separated by their speed. A pole that is very close to the
imaginary axis will take a long time to settle; one that is very far from the imaginary axis will
settle very quickly. The magnetic system is described by the following state- variable models:

0 1 0 0
x· = 245 −0.0814 24.27 x + 0 u
0 0 −250 5

4
 The poles of the system are equal to the eigenvalues of matrix “A,” which are -250, -15.7,
and 15.61. Therefore the system is inherently unstable based on the root locus shown in Fig. 2.
To observe what happens to this unstable system when there is a non-zero initial condition,
we use the code in (Appendix B.1); the Fig. 3 shows the ball’s behavior.

Figure. 2. Root Locus of System Figure. 3. Open Loop Response to Non-

zero Initial Condition

2.2. Control Design using Pole Placement

For simplicity, we assume the reference is zero, r = 0. The input is then u = − K x + r.
The state-space equations for the closed-loop feedback system are, therefore:

x· = A x + B(−K x + r) = (A − BK )x + Br,
y = Cx

a(s) = (s + 250)(s + 15.7)(s − 15.61) = − 61269.2 − 222.577s + 250.09s 2 + s 3

⇒ a = [250.09 −222.577 −61269.2]

2.2.1. Slow Poles

The slow chosen poles are: -3, -4, -5
Therefore the characteristic equation is: αs(s) = (s + 3)(s + 4)(s + 5)
We use the “place” function in MATLAB to obtain the gain (Ks):

5
I=eye(3,3);

c=[B A*B A*A*B];

k_slow=[0 0 1]*c^-1*((A+5*I)*(A+4*I)*(A+4*I))
k_fast=[0 0 1]*c^-1*((A+30*I)*(A+35*I)*(A+45*I))

By running this code in the Fig. 4 shows the step response after the designed state feedback
is added to the closed loop system.

Figure. 4

2.2.1. Fast Poles

The slow chosen poles are: -30, -35, -45
Therefore the characteristic equation is: αf (s) = (s + 30)(s + 35)(s + 45)
We use the “place” function in MATLAB to obtain the gain (Kf):

6
 %Fast Poles
p11 = -30;
p22 = -35;
p33 = -45;

%Gain
K_f = place(A,B,[p11 p22 p33])

%step
step(ss(A-B*K_f,B,C,D),t)
title('Step Response Fast Poles')

Figure. 5

2.3. Add Gain

Figure. 6. State-Feedback with Gain for Reference Signal

7
 As can be seen in the diagrams below, the controlled systems do not follow the input (the
DC gain of the controlled system is not one) in order for the system to follow the input and the
step response converges to one, a gain “ ” is putted in the input so that the step response of both
systems is equal to one and we can compare them better. We’ll design a system in Simulink (Fig.
7. )named “State-Feedback” which is shown in Fig. 8. (The blue line is for the fast poles and the
yellow one is for the slow poles.)

Figure 7

Figure. 8.

As can be seen, the system for which the faster poles are considered has a significant
overshoot. If the system does not overshoot with slower poles, it converges slowly to the final

8
𝑃
value. Therefore, the effort we paid for increasing the speed is actually increasing the system
overshoot.

3. State-Feedback with Additive Disturbance

Disturbance signals represent unwanted inputs which affect the control-system's output, and
result in an increase of the system error. Assume w is the disturbance parameter, the state
equations are:
x· = A x + Bu + D
The schematic of the system is shown in Fig. 9.

Figure. 9. Generalized Feedback Control System with

Additive Disturbance

We’ll implement this controller using the “Band-Limited White Nosie” block in Simulink as
Fig. 10.

Figure. 10

9
 Figure. 11: State-Feedback +Noise Figure. 12: State-Feedback + Gain + Noise

As we can see, the system is not robust to noise (due to the large coef cients in the conversion
function). But relatively, in the case where the poles are slower, the system has less uctuations
compared to the mode and has better relative stability. In both systems, after removing the noise,
the system reaches a steady state and becomes stable.

4. Tracker using State-Feedback with Integral Action

Figure. 13.

We have:
u = − K x − Ke q = − [K Ke] [q]
x
· = r − y(t) = r − Cx (t)
q(t)

The purpose is to have q· → 0 when t → ∞. Therefore we have:

10
fi
fl
 x· = A x + Bu
q· = − Cx + r
The state-space is:

[q· ] [−C 0] [q] [ 0 ]

x·
u + [0] r
A 0 x B
= +
I
y = [C 0] [q]
x

4.1. Controllability
In order to use this method, the matrices Ā and B̄ should be controllable.

0 1 0 0 0

[−C 0]
, B̄ = [ ] =
A 0 245 −0.0814 24.47 0 B 0
Ā = =
0 0 −250 0 0 5
−1 0 0 0 0
0 0 122.35 −30597.459
0 122.35 −30597.459 7679341.383
⇒ Φ̄c = [B̄ Ā B̄ Ā2 B̄ Ā3 B̄] =
5 −1250 312500 −78125000
0 0 0 −122.35

The controllability matrix’s rank is 4. Therefore it’s full rank and controllable.

4.2. Obtain K and Ke

From Part 4.1. we obtain a(s) based on Ā:
a(s) = det(sI − Ā) = s 4 + 250.08s 3 − 224.65s 2 − 61250s
→ [250.08 −224.65 −61250 0]

Assume that we have three groups of desired poles:

1- -3, -4, -5, -7
2- -30, -35, -45, -50

Fig 14

11
We used the White Noise as is shown in Fig. 14.

The response using slow poles are shown in Fig . 15.

Fig. 15

The response using fast poles are shown in Fig. 16 .

Figure. 16

The results show that the system is robust against disturbance and noise.

12
 5. Observer
When we can't measure all state variables (often the case in practice), we can build an
observer to estimate them, while measuring only the output . For the magnetic ball
example, we will add three new, estimated state variables ( ) to the system. The schematic is as
follows:

Figure. 15.

We know that system is observable as was mentioned in project’s phase 1.

Figure. 16

13
 Figure. 17 Figure. 18. x − x ̂

Figure. 19 Figure. 20. x − x ̂

Also, in order to check whether the estimator has worked well or not, we also check the
difference between the main states and the estimated states, whose graph is as follows, as it can
be seen that they match.

14
6. Reduced Order Observer
Using the Lyapunov equation, we design a reduced order estimator:

[ 0 −10] [1]
−8 0 1
F= ,L =

[1 −10]
1 −8
Φ(F,L) = → r a n k = 2 , then it’s controllable.
Therefore, the matrix T is obtained by the Lyapunov equation method as follows:

[−0.0080 0.0041 0.0004]

−0.0038 0.0041 0.0004
TA − F T = LC → T =

z· = Fz + T Bu + Ly, x ̂ = [ ] [ z]
C −1 y
T

Figure. 21

Figure. 22

15
 7. Non-Linear Model Control
A magnetic levitation system is a system that uses magnetic forces to levitate an object. The
magnetic levitation system is a non-linear system because the magnetic forces are proportional to
the magnetic field intensity and the inverse of the distance between the magnetic source and the
levitated object. This results in a non-linear relationship between the input variables and the
output variables (position of the levitated object).
We will see the results of applying one of the controllers and an observer to a non-linear
system in this section.

16