On nonlinear decoupling-controller design for maglev vehicles

Hengkun Liu ¹, Yungang Li¹ and Hu Cheng¹

¹Engineering Research Center of Maglev, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha Hunan 410073, China

*Corresponding Author’s E-mail: liberry@sina.com

Accepted 27 May 2013

Abstract

To enhance the reliability of levitation, an especial installation called joint-structure is applied to the maglev vehicle. Due to the joint-structure, each suspension point of the maglev vehicle is regulated by two independent controllers. When one controller of the suspension point breaks down, the system can still be stably suspended by the other controller. However, there is strong force-coupling between the two controllers for the joint-structure, which makes the controller designed based on totally separated suspension point unsuccessful in application. To realize stable suspension for joint-structure, nonlinear decoupling control techniques is introduced to obtain a globally decoupling and linearized model for the system. Then the control parameters are designed by pole assignment. Experimental and simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm.

Keywords: Maglev vehicles, Nonlinear decoupling control, Global stability.