Analysis and Control of a DC Electric Drive Exhibiting

Dead Zone Characteristics

Matthew F. Borowski
University of New Hampshire Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
33 Academic Way Durham, NH 03824
m.borowski@unh.edu

ABSTRACT accomplishing its task by disallowing the motor to rotate

Dead-zone discontinuity is a nonlinearity which
exists in many practical electric drive systems. Dead-zone
is caused primarily by the Coulomb friction force [2] from
the drives rotor. In this paper, analysis is performed on a
DC electric drive which exhibits a large dead-zone region
caused by the static friction of the drive. This static friction
prevents the rotor from turning until the torque created by
the drive is large enough to overcome it..
There are methods to control and compensate for
over all applied torques
A position controlled electric drive accepts a
desired position as its input and ideally tends toward that
position. A common application of this system is a shore
crane, which lifts shipping crates onto and off of the decks
of cargo ships. Position accuracy for this application is
essential since the system needs to handle the task of
moving valuable cargo.
Motor Mechanical TF

dead-zone nonlinearity. Two of which that are discussed in x_in

x_in
k_A V_In
1
L.s+R i
k_T Torque T_DZ
1
J.s+B
Omega 1
s
x_out

this paper are PID control and a proposed intelligent logic Constant
k_amp Motor Electric TF k_TORQUE
Dead Zone Saturation Integrator

V_Back_EMF k_BEMF
controller. PID control proved inadequate for the type of k_B

control needed. The proposed logic controller will teach

itself the compensation needed for varying position inputs.
Over time, the system will learn how much compensation is Figure 1. Block Diagram of closed-loop system without
needed to reach the desired state and apply this correction. compensation

Author Keywords A motors dead-zone limits the ability of the drive

DC machine, electric drive, PID, dead-zone compensation
INTRODUCTION
DC electric machines are electromechanical
systems which can function as either an electric drive or an
electric generator, depending on the applied input [1]. A
DC electric drive is a system which converts an applied
electromotive force into mechanical motion. DC electric
drives are used in many different applications; most of the
products in modern society were created by the use of at
to respond to small inputs since the torque generated by a
small input will typically be less than the torque required to
overcome the Coulomb friction force [3]. Figure 1 includes
the dead-zone nonlinearity which is inherent in the DC
drive model. Motor dead-zone introduces position errors
that can severely affect the performance of a DC drive
application. The position error for a DC drive with dead-
zone compared to one without is shown in figure 2.
6
Position of rotor with and without dead-zone

least one electric drive. The equations for an electric drive Position without Dead-Zone
Position with Dead-Zone
are as follows: 5

(1) 4
Position (Radians)

3
(2)
2

The DC drive system is part of a position- 1

controlled system whose primary task is to track a position

input. The dead-zone prevents the feedback system from 0

-1
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for 0 1 2 3 4
Time (Seconds)
5 6 7 8

personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies Figure 2. Position difference of drive with and without
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, deadzone (Input position of 5 then back to 0)
or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior
specific permission and/or a fee. (2010)
 As can be observed, the position error introduced
is quite significant and could be detrimental in a physical
system that requires position accuracy. A method needs to
be implemented that can compensate for the dead-zone.
Two proposed methods that have the possibility to
compensate for dead-zone are proportional, integral,
derivative (PID) control and learning control that can
account for the position error introduced by the drives
one of which is passed through an integrator and one which
is passed through a differentiator. Ideally, a PID controller
can improve transient response and eliminate steady state
error. Design of the controller should place less emphasis
on the transient response and more emphasis on correcting
the steady state error. The PID controller which is added to
the system is shown in figure 5.
Motor Mechanical TF

dead-zone. Both of these methods require that specific x_in

x_in
In 1Out1 k_A V_In
1
L.s+R i
k_T Torque T_DZ
1
J.s+B
Omega 1
s
x_out

Constant PID Controller Dead Zone Saturation Integrator

motor dynamics are known and remain constant. k_amp

V_Back_EMF
Motor Electric TF k_TORQUE
k_BEMF

k_B
ANALYSIS
The position controlled DC drive system can be
broken down into the following subsystems: 1) system Figure 4. Block Diagram of closed-loop system with PID
input, 2) controller/compensator, 3) DC drive system, 4) controller attached
system feedback. This subsystem assembly is shown in
kd du /dt
figure 3.
kd Derivative
1
System 1 ki 1
s
System + Controller/ DC Electric
Output In 1 ki
Out 1
Input Compensator Drive Integrator 1 Saturation
- kp

kp

System Figure 5. Block diagram of PID controller used in figure 4

Feedback
Figure 3. Subsystem assembly of position controlled DC drive
system
The system input is a step command which
provides the desired motor position at the final time. The
DC electric drive system is the plant which needs to be
controlled and in which the static friction which causes the
dead-zone is inherently present. The system feedback for
this system is a closed loop position tracking system which,
ideally, should control the system output to match the
system input. As this papers introduction stated, the
discontinuity makes this impossible without the use of a
controller/compensator.
Equations (1) and (2) provide the dynamics for the
The PID controller was tuned using basic
knowledge of what system response was required and fine-
tuned by checking the output against different values of kp,
ki, and kd. The controller was observed to improve the
steady state tracking error but only using very specific
values for the PID gains. Any small variation in any of the
gains quickly reintroduced the steady state error back into
the system. A variation of kd, the derivative gain quickly
amounted to an increase in the tracking error of the system.
Three iterations of this are shown in figure 6 and it can be
observed that the sensitivity to the control gains could
greatly detract from the practical usefulness of this
controller.
Position of rotor using PID Controller (Step Input of 5). kp = 15, ki = 1
6

electric drive system. These are standard DC motor drive

dynamic equations and were used to create the Simulink 5

model of the system shown in figure 1. From this model,

kd = 2.397
the voltage applied to the armature, the current through the 4 kd = 2.6

armature, the torque generated by the motor (with and kd = 2.2

Position (Radians)

without dead-zone), the rotor velocity and rotor speed are 3

readily available.
2
CONTROL
Two methods are introduced in an effort to
minimize the detrimental effects of the dead-zone. The first 1

method is to apply a PID controller to alter the system

response and remove steady-state error. The second method 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Time (Seconds)
1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2

proposed in this paper is a logic controller capable of

learning system response and creating a look-up table to Figure 6. Comparison of steady state tracking error for PID
compensate for the systems steady state error. controlled system with varying kd.

PID Control Intelligent Logic Controller

The system with PID controller is shown in figure A fuzzy logic controller is proposed in this paper
4. A PID controller is a summing junction from three gains, that will provide the ideal amount of compensation
depending on the desired system output. This position
(8)
compensator will train itself over a number of input
iterations to know how far the final rotor position is from
where,
the desired position. This knowledge will be placed into a
look-up table for the system to use once operational. It is (9)
important to first define some controller and system
variables. (10)
Damping Desired rotor (11)
Force position
Distance rotor (12)
Inertia has travelled
after 18
Motor Torque, Rotor Position, Rotor Velocity over time

Varying input Current time 16 Rotor Velocity (Radians/Sec)

Velocity DZ Torque (Joule/Radian)
Position when Time when 14 Rotor Position (Radians)
drive enters drive enters
12
dead-zone dead-zone

Magnitude
10
Steady state
error between 8
Final time x final
and 6

Velocity when
Steady state 2 Torque DZ
drive enters
position
dead-zone 0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Time (Seconds)

The controller will analyze the time at which the Figure 7. Drive torque, rotor position and rotor velocity
input torque drops to zero (tDZ). The controller will then (x_in = 5)
solve for the current rotor velocity at tDZ. The zero-input The logic controller will run multiple iterations of
response can then be analyzed because the mechanical a varying , referred to as and then compare
transfer function is known. Taking the inverse Laplace to the desired final position value. The controller will
transform provides the time response of the drives rotor store the value of that minimizes the position
and is shown in (2).
error, . Multiple desired positions will be run through
this method and a look-up table will be generated. The
system will look up the compensation needed in the table
(3)
and then apply it to the input.
To Workspace 1

torqueandvelocity

At tDZ, the rotor has an initial velocity, which

decays to zero. The velocity that the rotor is spinning at Scope 2

time tDZ will be referred to as VDZ. The rotors velocitys 1 1 Omega 1

x_comepensated k_A k_T
response is a decaying exponential and is defined as: Input k_amp
V_In L.s+R
Motor Electric TF
i

k_TORQUE
Torque
Dead Zone
Torque_DZ J.s+B
Motor Mechanical TF
s
Integrator
x_out

V_Back_EMF In Deadzone ? <= DZ

(4) k_BEMF

k_B

The rotors velocity at any point after tDZ can be Detect

Scope 3 Increase

found by substituting U > U/z

(5) deadzonedetector

To Workspace

for
Velocity is the time derivative of position.
Integrating velocity results in:
(6)
Figure 8. System shown with intelligent logic controller input
and dead-zone detector
For this compensator to work correctly, the drives
(7) dynamics must not vary greatly with time. The compensator
will become more accurate with time due to the number of
iterations ever increasing and finding a more precise
compensation value.
CONCLUSION long span of time. It requires a relatively simple algorithm
PID control is not ideal for this application to implement in any microcontroller and provides a stable,
because the sensitivity of the control gains is very high. As accurate output. The compensator will continue expanding
shown in figure 6, a slight variation of the gain quickly its lookup table as new input positions are applied and the
leads to an unacceptable position error. The gains would error measured.
have to be impervious to and unaffected by noise or voltage
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
variation. Although PID could work as a quick solution, it
The model created, along with the design and
is not recommended for long-term use in a system
analysis of the system and controller, neglected the effects
exhibiting nonlinearity due to a dead-zone.
of a load attached to the system. Further research needs to
The intelligent logic controller corrects any be done on how well these control schemes would perform
position error by compensating for it using a look up table in a real-world application attached to a load.
for the right compensation value. This process is time-
The current algorithm for finding the amount of
intensive when the compensator is first initialized but
input compensation currently utilizes a brute force search
should require very little overhead once established. The
method to find the compensation which minimizes the
position error of the system using a desired output of 5
position error. There are other mathematical methods which
radians is shown in figure 8. The compensator stepped
may work for this compensator, including but not limited
through varying inputs and found that a compensation value
to, gradient search.
of 0.195 was needed to minimize position error.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Position Error over time with and without Intelligent Logic Compensator
5 I would like to thank Dr. L. Gordon Kraft and Dr.
4 Without Compensator
May-Win Thein for their contributions to this research
With Compensator project and for always encouraging curiosity in research.
3

2 REFERENCES
1. Chapman, Stephen J. Electric Machinery Fundamentals.
Rotor Position (RADs)

1
McGraw-Hill Inc., New York, NY, USA, 1991.
0

2. Kara, T., Eker, I. Nonlinear closed-loop direct

-1
identification of a DC motor with load for low speed
-2
two-directional operation. Electrical Engineering. 86
-3 (2004) 87-96.
-4
3. Slotine, JJ., Li, W. Applied Nonlinear Control. Prentice
-5
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA, 1991.
Time

Figure 9. Position error of the system for a compensated and

uncompensated input
This compensator is recommended for a system to
be used in an application that will perform its job over a