2012 IEEE 8th International Colloquium on Signal Processing and its Applications

System Identification and Control of an Electro-

Hydraulic Actuator System
T. G. Ling, M. F. Rahmat, A. R. Husain
Department of Control and Instrumentation,
Faculty of Electrical Engineering,
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia,
81310 Skudai, Johor. Malaysia.
fuaad@fke.utm.my

AbstractPrecise control of Electro-Hydraulic Actuator (EHA)
system has been a challenging task due to nonlinearities, time
varying characteristics and uncertainties of the system. A
controller can be designed when given accurate model of the
system. This paper presents the process to obtain an EHA
systems model using system identification approach. System
identification process has merit in obtaining system model as it
requires only input and output data pairs from the system.
Validation of the model is done by comparing the performance
with the actual EHA system. A PID controller is later designed
based on model obtained for accurate position tracking of the
system. Simulation result and real time experiment show that the
system which is applied with the proposed controller is able to
perform position tracking with high accuracy.
Keywords-system identification; electro-hydraulic actuator;
PID control
I. INTRODUCTION
Electro-hydraulic actuator (EHA) is one of the
fundamental drive systems which are applied in industrial
process and engineering practice. EHA systems
characteristics of high power to weight ratio, fast and smooth
response and good power capability are its advantages over
electric drive systems. Apart from its application in industrial
hydraulic machines [1], EHA system is applied in many
positioning systems [2-9].
Position tracking accuracy of EHA system is becoming one
of the most popular researches in recent decades due to its
ability in position tracking. EHA systems nature behaviour of
highly nonlinearities, uncertainties [10] and time varying
characteristics [11] make the research challenging. The
nonlinear dynamics of EHA system is the main reason to
cause the controlling process a tough task [12]. Precise control
of electro-hydraulic actuator system promises the systems
position tracking accuracy. Thus, in order to design such
controller, model of the EHA system has to be obtained in the
first place.
System model can be achieve by two approaches, which
are physical law modeling and system identification [2].
Physical law modeling which requires expert and thorough
knowledge about the system is hard to apply. System
identification in contrast, need only input and output data pairs
to obtain system model, is popular due to ease to apply. As
system identification approach does not require knowledge
about the system, it is also known as black box modeling.
II. SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION
System identification is the process to obtain system model
through systems input-output (stimulus-response) data. Term
identification was first introduce by Zadeh [13], referring to
problem of identifying the input-output relationships based on
experimental data sets.
A. Stimulus Signal
Stimulus signal is used to excite the operating region of
the system so that the characteristics of the system can be
captured and modeled later. When the signal can excite more
operating region of the system, data set obtained will contain
more system characteristics. The variation of stimulus signal is
able to excite different operating region of the system, thus
characteristics of the system will be expressed in the system
response data obtained [2, 7-8]. A good stimulus signal is
often rich in frequency and amplitude. The stimulus signal
used in EHA system identification is given in (1).
y = 1.5cos2(0.05)t + 1.5cos2(0.2)t + 2.5cos2(1)t (1)
Equation (1) shows that the stimulus signal contains three
frequency, 0.05Hz, 0.2Hz, and 1Hz. The highest frequency of
the multisine wave is limited to 1 Hz, as the EHA system does
not be able to response to high frequencies. EHA system
performs like a low pass filter, which only response to low
frequencies. The signal is shown in Figure 1, and is able to
excite most of the operating region of EHA system.
B. Model Selection
Stimulus-response data set obtained is used in system
identification process. In this process, system model have to
be chosen. Linear model ARX is chosen as EHA systems
model. Even though EHA system is nonlinear, linear model is
preferred as it is much simpler and can represent the real
system with high precision. Linear model ARX has shown to
provide a high accurate model for a nonlinear EHA system [7-
9]. The structure of the model can be determined by applying
Parsinomy Principle [14-15]. Model with less parameter is

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 2012 IEEE 8th International Colloquium on Signal Processing and its Applications

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Multisine Signal
III. EXPERIMENT SETUP
4 EHA system under test contains of hydraulic pump, piston,
2 wire sensor, servo valve, and hydraulic motor. The EHA
Amplitude

0 system communicates with computer through NI-PCI-6221

-2
DAQ card on MATLAB platform.
-4

-6 During the system identification process, stimulus signal is

generated by computer, and sent to servo valve through DAQ
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Time (s)

card. Servo valve controls the flow of hydraulic fluid and

Figure 1. Stimulus Signal mode the piston accordingly. The position of piston is
captured by wire sensor. The data collected in this process is
chosen as model when the accuracy of model in higher order used to identify the model. Validation of the model is done by
does not significantly improve. comparing model performance with real system. Best fitting
C. Controller Design percentage is observed during model validation, where the
higher percentage indicates the more accurate model.
PID (proportional integral derivative) controller is used in
position tracking purpose of EHA system. PID control is PID controller with the parameters obtained using Ziegler-
chosen as it is one of earliest control strategies which is widely Nichols tuning method [16] is simulated before it is applied on
applied because of its simplicity structure and powerful real system. During simulation process, the PID controller is
control algorithm. applied on model which is obtained in system identification
step, represented by discrete transfer function. The simulation
Response of the system such as rise time, overshoot, response is recorded and used to compare with the response of
settling time and steady state error can be improved by tuning real system. The response of real system is obtained by
Kp, Ki, and Kd parameters of the controller. The parameters applying PID controller with same parameters as in simulation
Kp, Ki, and Kd are referred as proportional parameter, intergral and excites the system with same stimulus signal. The
parameter and derivative parameter respectively. Through response and performance of both simulation and real system
tuning, the desire response of the system such as rise time, should be similar.
overshoot, settling time and steady state response can be
achieved. PID controller is designed based on Ziegler-Nichols
tuning method [16]. TABLE I. KP, KI AND KD PARAMETERS USING ZIEGLER-NICHOLS
TUNING METHOD
The tuning method begins with finding the critical gain,
Kcr and critical period of oscillation, Tcr. The value of Kp, Ki, Controller Calculation of Characteristic Values
Type Kp Ti Td Ki Kd
and Kd adjusted based on the parameters based as shown in
Table 1. The obtained parameters can be adjusted manually in PID 0.6Kcr 0.5Tcr 0.12Tcr Kp/Ti KpxTd
order to produce the best output response. The critical gain
for the model obtained is Kcr = 6.9 with critical period, Tcr =
107.22. From calculation based on Table 1 and manual
adjustment, the Kp, Ki, and Kd parameters of PID controller
are 4.14, 0.42 and 1.35 respectively.

Measured and simulated model output, Best Fitting = 95.8%

40
Simulated
Actual
30

20

10
Position (mm)

-10

-20

-30

-40
50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
Time (s)

Figure 2. Model Validation

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 2012 IEEE 8th International Colloquium on Signal Processing and its Applications
60
50
40
m)
30
Position(m
20
10
-10
0 10 20
Figure 3. Step Response of Model and Real System
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Stimulus-response data set is collected at 50ms sampling
time, which results in best accuracy [2]. Data is collected
for100 seconds. For system identification process, the data
set is divided equally into two sets, training data and
checking data respectively. Training data is used to estimate
the ARX model. Third order model structure 331 [2] is
selected according to Parsinomy Principle. The model
obtained is shown in equation (2) to (4).
A(q)y(t) = B(q)u(t)
Where,
A(q) = 1 1.798q-1 + 0.9392q-2 0.1407q-3
B(q) = 0.3538q-1 0.4189q-2 + 0.1714q-3
Model validation is done by simulating the response of
the model and compare with the checking data. Figure 2
display the response of the model comparing with checking
data. Result shows that the response of the model is close to
actual response of electro-hydraulic actuator system, with
the best fitting percentage 95.8%. The best fitting accuracy
does not reach 100% due to some nonlinearity of the system
which linear model is unable to model.
PID control result on the ARX model during simulation
process and on the EHA plant during real time process is
shown in Figure 3. From the figure, it shows that the
transient response and steady step response of simulation
work and real time process is similar. The fast transient
response and good steady step response show that PID
controller is able to provide good control for a nonlinear
EHA plant. However, the control on system model and real
system exhibit some difference. The slight different in
transient response and steady step response is caused by
nonlinearities and uncertainties which appear in the EHA
system.
PID Control on Step Response
Reference
Actual
Simulated
30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Time (s)
V. CONCLUSIONS
As a conclusion, nonlinear electro-hydraulic actuator
(EHA) system can be model by linear model estimation.
System identification model estimation approach is ease to
apply as it requires only stimulus-response data pairs of the
system. By using linear model estimation, ARX model with
structure 331 is obtained. The linear model performs well in
estimating the response of EHA system, with 95.8% best
fitting percentage.
ARX model is used in PID controller design during
(2) simulation process. Parameters in PID controller later are
used to control the real EHA system. Result demonstrates
(3) similar responses between simulation and real system. Some
(4) steady state error turns up during the real test. This is due to
some nonlinearity of the EHA system. Future research can
focus on designing an adaptive controllers which can adapt
to the system nonlinearities and achieve better response.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research is supported by the Ministry of Higher
Education of Malaysia under MyBrain 15 program and
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) through Research
University Grant (GUP) Tier 1 vote number
Q.J130000.7123.00H36. Authors are grateful to the Ministry,
UTeM and UTM for supporting the present work.
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