DOI 10.

1007/s00170-004-2145-0
ORI GI NAL ARTI CLE
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2005) 26: 117123
Hong-Ming Chen Jyh-Chyang Renn Juhng-Perng Su
Sliding mode control with varying boundary layers
for an electro-hydraulic position servo system
Received: 18 November 2003 / Accepted: 11 February 2004 / Published online: 19 January 2005
Springer-Verlag London Limited 2005
Abstract In this study, a new sliding mode control with varying
boundary layers is proposed to improve the tracking performance
of a nonlinear electro-hydraulic position servo system, which can
be found in many manufacturing devices. The key feature of the
proposed control scheme is the use of varying boundary layers
instead of xed boundary layers, which are usually employed
in conventional sliding mode control. The validity of the pro-
posed control scheme is veried through practical testing on an
experimental electro-hydraulic positioning device. In the cases
of step and sinusoidal command inputs, the experimental results
strongly suggest that the proposed control scheme is capable of
improving the tracking precision without causing any chatter-
ing. In addition, the new control scheme seems to be very robust
against various set point conditions.
Keywords Electro-hydraulic position servo system
Sliding mode control Varying boundary layer
1 Introduction
The application of hydraulic actuation to heavy-duty equipment
reects the ability of the hydraulic circuit to transmit larger
H.-M. Chen (u)
Graduate School of Engineering Science and Technology
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology
Department of Electronic Engineering,
Chien Kuo Institute of Technology No. 1,
Chieh Sou North Road, Changhua City, Taiwan 500, R.O.C.
E-mail: steven@ckit.edu.tw
Tel.: +886-4-7111111 ext. 3327
Fax: +886-4-8341455
J.-C. Renn
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology,
Taiwan, R.O.C.
J.-P. Su
Department of Electrical Engineering,
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology,
Taiwan, R.O.C.
forces and to be easily controlled. It has many distinct advan-
tages such as the fast response speed, very high system stiffness,
and a higher force-to-weight ratio [1, 2]. The electro-hydraulic
servo system, among others, is perhaps the most important sys-
tem for position servo applications because it takes the advan-
tages of both the large output power of traditional hydraulic
systems and the rapid response of electric systems [2, 3]. Typical
applications of electro-hydraulic position servo systems include
injection molding machines, different kinds of machine tools and
construction machinery, etc. However, there are also many chal-
lenges in the design of electro-hydraulic control systems [1, 2].
For example, they are the highly nonlinear phenomena such
as uid compressibility, the ow-pressure relationship and dead
band due to the internal leakage and hysteresis, and the many un-
certainties of hydraulic systems due to linearization. Therefore,
it seems to be quite difcult to perform a high precision servo
control by using linear control methods.
Due to its robustness against parameter variations and ex-
ternal disturbances, sliding mode control has been an effect-
ive means for controlling nonlinear systems with uncertain-
ties [46]; an ideal sliding mode controller inevitably results in
a chattering control action. Chattering is usually undesirable be-
cause it results in a high heat loss in electrical power circuits,
or high wear of moving mechanical parts. In addition, chat-
tering involves extremely high control activity and may excite
unmodeled high-frequency dynamics so as to degrade the per-
formance of the system. To suppress chattering, a continuous
approximation of the discontinuous sliding mode control is usu-
ally employed in the literature [69]. The continuous control is
designed to make a boundary layer attractive such that trajecto-
ries started off the boundary layer will be attracted to this region
in nite time.
Though, chattering can be made negligible if the width of
the boundary layer is chosen to be large enough, the guaran-
teed tracking precision will deteriorate if the available control
bandwidth is limited. For the purpose of obtaining high track-
ing accuracy, a thin boundary layer is required. However, it
risks exciting a high-frequency control input. To reach a bet-
ter compromise between small chattering and good tracking
118
precision in the presence of parameter uncertainties, various
compensation strategies have been proposed. For example, inte-
gral sliding control [1, 10, 11], sliding control with time-varying
boundary layers [12, 13], and complementary sliding mode con-
trol [4, 8], etc. However, most of them are based on com-
puter simulations; experimental results are lacking in these re-
ports. In this paper, a new sliding mode control scheme with
varying boundary layers is proposed for electro-hydraulic pos-
ition servo systems (EHPSS) to improve the tracking perform-
ance. A key feature of the control scheme is the varying width
of boundary layers which provides appropriate high frequency
ltering to avoid chattering and obtain high tracking preci-
sion. To demonstrate the validity of the proposed approach,
an experimental device of the EHPSS is constructed. The ex-
perimental results strongly suggest that the proposed approach
provides good position tracking performance with high track-
ing precision as well as good robustness against various set
point conditions.
2 Control of an electro-hydraulic position
servo system
The design of stabilizing controllers for nonlinear EHPSS has
been extensively examined in recent years. A laboratory experi-
mental EHPSS is shown in Fig. 1, where the mass-spring system
is the external load and is driven by a hydraulic cylinder. In
addition, a servo valve controls the motion of the cylinder. The
objective of the control is to keep the displacement x of the
cylinder following a desired trajectory x
d
as closely as possible,
regardless of operating points. Typical applications of such an
electro-hydraulic positioning system include the hydraulic press,
Fig. 1. The electro-hydraulic position servo system
material testing machine, injection molding machine, etc. The
entire system equations are described as follows.
The relation between the servo valve spool displacement x
v
and the load ow rate Q
L
is governed by the orice law [2]:
Q
L
= K
q
x
v
K
c
P
L
, (1)
where Q
L
is the load ow, P
L
= P
1
P
2
is the load pressure,
x
v
is the displacement of spool in the servo valve, K
c
is the
valve pressure gain under different operating point and K
q
is the
valve ow gain that varies under different operating points. This
is given by [2]:
K
q
=k
v
c
d
w
_
1

_
P
S
sgn(x
v
)P
L
, (2)
where k
v
is the servo valve gain, c
d
is the discharge coefcient
of the cylinder, w is the servo valve area gradient, is the oil
density, and P
S
is the supply pressure. When the servo valve is
regarded as a zero-order system, then x
v
=k
a
u, where k
a
is the
servo amplier gain, and u is the servo valve control input signal.
Taking leakage and compressibility into considerations, the ow
continuity property of the cylinder chamber yields [2]:
Q
L
= A x +
V
t
4
e

P
L
+K
ce
P
L
, (3)
where A is the pressure area in the actuator, V
t
is the effective
system oil volume,
e
is the oil effective bulk modulus, K
ce
is
the total leakage coefcient of cylinder, and x is the velocity of
the cylinder shaft. The force balance equation for the cylinder is
given by:
AP
L
= M x +B
L
x +K
s
x +F
f
, (4)
119
where M is the effective system mass, B
L
is the coefcient of
viscous friction, K
s
is the elastic load stiffness, and F
f
is the
external disturbance. Combining Eqs. 14, the following set of
state equations can be obtained:

X
1
= X
2
(5)

X
2
= X
3
(6)

X
3
=a
1
X
1
+a
2
X
2
+a
3
X
3
+D+bu , (7)
where
a
1
=
K
s
M

1
, a
2
=
K
s
M

B
L
M

1

A
2
M
,
a
3
=
B
L
M

1
, D =
1
M

F
f

1
M

1
F
f
,
b =
A
M
K
q
k
a
, =
4
e
V
t
,

1
=(k
ce
+k
t
) , X
1
= x .
Now, for the EHPSS, Eq. 7 is rearranged to form a general
model:
(3)
x =a
1
x +a
2
x +a
3
x +D+bu . (8)
To prove experimentally the validity of the proposed algorithms
described above, a test device of an EHPSS is constructed. This
system consists of a hydraulic control loop, servo valve, cylinder,
and control unit, which are shown in Fig. 2.
A double-acting hydraulic cylinder with an effective area of
A =10.210
4
m
2
and a maximal stroke of 20 cm is used as
the controlled actuator. To measure the position of this cylin-
der, an optical linear scale (MITUTUYO-AT2) is employed.
The proposed sliding mode controller with varying boundary
layer and the acquisition and processing of the measured data
are all implemented in a Pentium-III PC with an AD/DA in-
terface card of 12 bit resolution (ADLINK-9112). The rated
ow of the chosen servo valve (ATCHLEY-CONTROLS) is
(at pressure drop 70 bar) with a bandwidth ( f
3 dB
) of 80 Hz
(for 100% rated current). The system supply pressure is xed
at 30 bar.
Fig. 2. The experimental device of EHPSS
3 Sliding mode control with varying boundary layer
To highlight the main point of the design of change boundary
layer sliding mode control, we consider the following simple
nth-order SISO nonlinear uncertain system:
(n)
y
= f
_
y, y, . . .,
(n1)
y
, t
_
+g
_
y, y, . . .,
(n1)
y
_
u , (9)
where u, y R, are the input and output, respectively; f, g :
R
n
R are smooth functions. Assume that f is not completely
known but can be written as f =

f + f , where

f is the nominal
part and f is the uncertain part, which is bounded by a known
function F, i.e.,
|f(x,t)| F(x,t) , (10)
where x :=[x
1
, x
2
, . . ., x
n
]
T
=[y, y, . . .,
(n1)
y
]
T
, and the control
gain g(x) is unknown but conned in certain constant range, i.e.,
0 <
min
g(x)
max
, (11)
where
min
,
max
are given constants, time-varying or state-
dependent functions.
The control object is to nd a continuous sliding control u
such that the output y of Eq. 9 will approximately track a desired
signal, y
d
, which is assumed to be nth-order continuously dif-
ferentiable and all of its derivatives are uniformly bounded, i.e.,
lim
t
y(t) = y
d
(t).
Given the tracking error e(t) := y(t) y
d
(t), the generalized
error is given as:
s(t) =
_
d
dt
+
_
n1
e , (12)
where > 0, which provides a useful transformation such that
the original nth-order tracking problem can be transformed into
an equivalent 1st-order stabilization problem in the s variable.
Then, the error equations can be obtained as follows:
(n)
e = f(x) +g(x)u
(n)
y
d
. (13)
Differentiation of s with respect to t and adding s yields:
s +s =
_
d
dt
+
_
n
e , (14)
then, s =s +

f + w+f +gu , where
w =
(n)
y
d
+
n

k=1
_
n
k
_

(k)
(nk)
e . (15)
Let
G :=
1
_

min

max
. (16)
120
Clearly, 0 <
1
gG , and 0 <
1
(gG)
1
, where
=
_

max
/
min
. Dene the Lyapunov function candidate as:
V(s) =
1
2
s
2
. (17)
Given boundary layer > 0, the control input u for Eq. 9 was
designed as follows:
u =G
_
u +v
_
, (18)
where
u =

f w (19)
v = Ksat
_
s

_
. (20)
Substituting the control input u in Eq. 15 yields:
s =s +(1gG)
_

f + w
_
+f gGKsat
_
s

_
. (21)
If we choose K as follows,
K (+F) +( 1)

f + w

, (22)
where >0, then it can be shown that whenever |s| ,

V =s s s
2
|s| . (23)
The closed-loop system satisfying the sliding mode reaching
condition outside the boundary layer is |s| . This controller
ensures that starting from any initial state the error trajectories
will reach the boundary layer in nite time and the guaranteed
tracking precision will be [9]:

i
e

(2)
i
, (24)
where =

n1
, whenever |s| .
For smoothness (to reduce chattering) of the control input
signal, larger width of the boundary layer is preferred. However,
for better tracking accuracy, a boundary layer with smaller width
is required. In this paper, the concept of varying width of the
boundary layer is proposed, which takes simultaneously the ad-
vantages of both the smoothness of the control inputs and the
better tracking accuracy. First, let =
1
(e) +
2
(1(e))
and the control input Eq. 20 is rewritten as follows:
v =Ksat
_
s

1
(e) +
2
(1(e))
,
_
(25)
where
1
and
2
are different boundary layers, 0 <
2
<
1
and (e) =1 for |e| >
c
, (e) =0 for |e|
c
. Therefore, if the
initial state is outside the boundary layer, |s|
1
, it will be at-
tracted to the boundary layer of the sliding surface. Furthermore,
if the absolute value of the tracking error is smaller than
c
, the
boundary layer is changed from
1
to
2
such that the track-
ing precision and the chattering of the control input signal are
signicantly improved.
Fig. 3. The guaranteed tracking error bounds
Remark 1. The widths
1
,
2
of the boundary layer can be de-
termined, respectively, as follows.
(1) By trial-and-error, the width of the boundary layer is de-
creased till a visible chattering of the control input signal
occurs and then set =
1
.
(2) A positive constant
c
is used to dene the switching thresh-
old of the tracking error such that the width of the boundary is
switched to a smaller value
2
<
1
, which is a small enough
that the chattering of the control input does not happen.
For n =2 and =1, the guaranteed tracking error bounds are
depicted in Fig. 3, where the heavy-shaded region represents the
error bound of the proposed sliding mode control with varying
boundary layer, while the light-shaded region represents that of
the conventional sliding mode control with xed boundary layer.
Obviously, the guaranteed steady-state tracking error by using
the proposed sliding mode control with varying boundary layer
is effectively reduced as shown in Fig. 3.
4 Experimental results and discussions
The following parameters of EHPSS were used in practical test:
M =10 kg , k
s
=0.0 N/m, B
L
=0.0 N/(m/s) ,
=4.51510
12
N/m
5
, A =10.210
4
m
2
,
1
=1.0 ,
=C
d
w
_
1

=1.35410
8
N/m
5/2
kg
1/2
,
P
s
=3010
5
pa , k
a
=410
4
m/V,
k
v
=0.01 m
3/2
pa
1/2
/s .
Substituting these values of parameters into Eq. 8, gives
(3)
x = f
_
x, x, x
_
+b(t)u , (26)
where f
_
x, x, x
_
=46989.8 x x 0.1
_

F
f
+F
f
_
,
b(t) =0.0552432
_
3e
6
sgn(u)P
L
.
121
The control laws for the EHPSS were designed as follows:
s =
_
d
dt
+
_
2
e ,
u =G
_

f wKsat
_
s

1
(e) +
2
(1(e))
__
,
K (+F) +( 1)

f + w

f =46989.8 x x ,
w =x
d
+3 e +3
2
e +
3
e .
Let F =0, and 5.524 =
min
g
max
=9.568. We have
G =
1

min

max
=0.13755, and =
_

max

min
=1.316. Set =0.2,

1
= 2.5,
2
= 0.4,
c
= 0.03. The following approaches are
presented for performance comparison.
1) Fixed boundary layer conventional sliding control approach:
Let the generalized error s and control input u be given as
s =
_
d
dt
+
_
2
e , u =G
_

f wKsat
_
s

__
,
where =0.2, =2.5.
Fig. 4. Step response using conventional sliding control with xed boundary
layer (40 mm)
Fig. 5. Control input of the conventional sliding with constant boundary
layer
2) Linear PID approach: Let the transfer function of the con-
troller be:
u = K
P
+
K
I
s
+K
d
s ,
where K
P
=0.1, K
I
=0.00001 and K
d
=0.00001.
To illustrate effectively the changing boundary layer sliding
control, let tracking position be a unit step 40 mm. From the
measured data shown in Figs. 4 and 5, it is found that the chat-
tering exists and is inevitable for the conventional sliding control
with a xed boundary layer when the width of the boundary layer
is set to be =0.4. By contrast, it can be observed from Figs. 6
and 7 that no chattering exists when using the proposed varying
boundary layer sliding control scheme.
To further evaluate the position control performance of the
PC-controlled EHPSS, the desired tracking inputs are set to be
unit step and sinusoidal signals, respectively. Lets rst con-
sider the case of unit step input. The cylinder tracking out-
puts to unit step inputs of x
d
= 40 mm and x
d
= 80 mm are
shown in Figs. 8 and 9, respectively. In Figs. 8a and 9a, it is
observed that the response curves using conventional sliding
control seem to coincide with the curves using the proposed
varying boundary layer sliding control scheme. However, on
a magnied scale as indicated in Figs. 8b and 9b, the track-
ing error from using the proposed new approach is obviously
found to be 0.01 mm. Meanwhile, the tracking error for the
conventional sliding control amounts approximately to 0.1 mm,
Fig. 6. Step response using sliding control with varying boundary layer
(40 mm)
Fig. 7. Control input of the sliding control with varying boundary layer
122
Fig. 8. Comparison of the step response (40 mm)
Fig. 9. Comparison of the step response (80 mm)
which is obviously much larger. Moreover, for different desired
tracking positions, the proposed new approach is much more
robust than the other two controllers. Some quantitative compar-
isons of the control performance using three different approaches
are summarized in Tables 1 and 2. Next, for a reference si-
Table 1. Comparisons of the control performance using three different ap-
proaches (40 mm)
Step response Delay time t
d
Settling time t
s
Steady state error
of 40 mm (0 50%) (s) (e
s
<5%) (s) e
ss
(mm)
PID control 0.163 0.331 0.805
Conventional
Sliding control 0.142 0.256 0.100
Varying boundary
Sliding control 0.140 0.250 0.010
nusoidal input, x
d
= 30 sin(2t) mm, Figs. 10 and 11 depicted
the corresponding tracking responses. It can be observed that
the sliding mode control with varying boundary layer possesses
a remarkably better tracking performance than that by using
PID control.
Table 2. Comparisons of the control performance using three different ap-
proaches (80 mm)
Step response Delay time t
d
Settling time t
s
Steady state error
of 80 mm (0 50%) (s) (e
s
< 5%) (s) e
ss
(mm)
PID control 0.315 0.869 2.340
Conventional
Sliding control 0.265 0.490 0.100
Varying boundary
Sliding control 0.262 0.470 0.010
123
Fig. 10. Comparison of the sinusoidal tracking response
Fig. 11. Comparison of the sinusoidal tracking error
5 Conclusion
By introducing the varying boundary layer, we have success-
fully presented a new sliding mode control scheme to effectively
improve the tracking performance. Three conclusions may be
drawn from the above discussions.
(1) With this new control law, we have shown that the tracking
error has been effectively reduced and the chattering phe-
nomenon has been successfully suppressed for the control
of the nonlinear EHPSS, as compared with the conventional
continuous sliding control.
(2) Through the experimental testing, the results show that the
proposed new approach provides high precision position con-
trol of a nonlinear EHPSS as well as good robustness against
various set points.
(3) From the laboratory testing, we conclude that, for tracking
performance in EHPSS, the sliding mode control with vary-
ing boundary layer is much better than the conventional slid-
ing control and linear PID control.
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