12/17/2016 Control Tutorials for MATLAB and Simulink ­ Motor Speed: Simulink Control

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INTRODUCTION CRUISE CONTROL MOTOR SPEED

SYSTEM

MODELING DC Motor Speed: Simulink Controller

ANALYSIS Design

CONTROL
Contents
PID
Extracting a linear model into MATLAB
ROOT LOCUS
Open­loop response
FREQUENCY Closed­loop response with lag compensator

STATE­SPACE Closed­loop response with lead compensator

DIGITAL
From the DC Motor Speed: Simulink Modeling page we generated two
different DC motor models in Simulink. We will now employ these models

SIMULINK within Simulink to simulate the system response and design different
approaches to control.
MODELING

CONTROL
Extracting a linear model into MATLAB

A linear model of the system can be extracted from the Simulink model into

the MATLAB workspace. This can accomplished employing the MATLAB

command linmod or from directly within Simulink as we will do here. We

will specifically use the base Simulink model developed from first
principles shown below. You can download this model here, or you can

refer to the DC Motor Speed: Simulink Modeling page to recreate the

model yourself.

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Recall that the physical parameters have to be set if they have not

previously been defined in the workspace.

J = 0.0 ;
b = 0. ;
K = 0.0 ;
R = ;
L = 0.5;

We then need to identify the inputs and outputs of the model we wish to
extract. First right­click on the signal representing the Voltage input in the
Simulink model. Then choose Linearization > Input Point from the

resulting menu. Similarly, right­click on the signal representing the Speed

output and select Linearization > Output Point from the resulting menu.

The input and output signals should now be identified on your model by
arrow symbols as shown in the figure below.

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In order to perform the extraction, select from the menus at the top of the
model window Tools > Control Design > Linear Analysis. This will cause

the Linear Analysis Tool to open. Within the Linear Analysis Tool
window, the Operating Point to be linearized about can remain the default,

Model Initial Condition. In order to perform the linearization, next click

the Linearize button identified by the green triangle. The result of this

linearization is the linsys object which now appears in the Linear

Analysis Workspace as shown below. Furthermore, the open­loop step
response of the linearized system was also generated automatically.

The open­loop step response above is consistent with the response

generated in the DC Motor Speed: System Analysis page The reason the
responses match so closely is because this Simulink model uses only

linear components. Note that this process can be used extract linear
approximations of models with nonlinear elements too.

We will further verify the model extraction by looking at the model itself.
The linearized model can be exported by simply dragging the object into
the MATLAB Workspace. This object can then be used within MATLAB in

the same manner as an object created directly from the MATLAB

command line. Specifically, entering the command zpk linsys in the

MATLAB command window demonstrates that the resulting model has the
following form.

(1)

This model matches the one generated in the DC Motor Speed: System
Modeling page. This can be seen by repeating the MATLAB commands

given below.

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s = tf 's' ;
P_motor = K/ J*s+b * L*s+R +K^ ;

zpk P_motor

ans =

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
s+9.997 s+ .00

Continuous‐time zero/pole/gain model.

Open­loop response

The open­loop step response can also be generated directly within

Simulink, without extracting any models to the MATLAB workspace. In

order to simulate the step response, the details of the simulation must first
be set. This can be accomplished by selecting Configuration Parameters

from the Simulation menu. Within the resulting menu, define the length for
which the simulation is to run in the Stop time field. We will enter "3" since

3 seconds will be long enough for the step response to reach steady state.
Within this window you can also specify various aspects of the numerical
solver, but we will just use the default values for this example.

Next we need to add an input signal and a means for displaying the output
of our simulation. This is done by doing the following:

Remove the In1 and Out1 blocks.

Insert a Step block from the Simulink/Sources library and connect it

with a line to the Voltage input of the motor subsystem.

To view the Speed output, insert a Scope from the Simulink/Sinks

library and connect it to the Speed output of the motor subsystem.

To provide a appropriate unit step input at t=0, double­click the Step

block and set the Step time to "0".

The final model should appear as shown in the following figure.

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Then run the simulation (press Ctrl­T or select Start from the Simulation

menu). When the simulation is finished, double­click on the scope and hit
its autoscale button. You should see the following output.

This response is identical to that obtained by MATLAB above using the

extracted model. This is again to be expected because this Simulink model

includes only linear blocks.

Closed­loop response with lag compensator

In the DC Motor Speed: Root Locus Controller Design page a lag

compensator was designed with the following transfer function.

(2)

To generate the closed­loop step response with this compensator in

Simulink, we will begin with the "Motor_Model.mdl" file described above.

We will then put the lag compensator in series with the motor subsystem

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and will feed back the motor's speed for comparison to a desired
reference.

More specifically, follow the steps given below:

Remove the Input and Output ports of the model.

Insert a Sum block from the Simulink/Math Operations library. Then

double­click on the block and enter "|+­" for its List of signs where the

symbol "|" serves as a spacer between ports of the block.

Insert a Transfer Function block from the Simulink/Continuous library.

Then double­click on the block and edit the Numerator coefficients

field to "[44 44]" and the Denominator coefficients field to "[1 0.01]".

Insert a Step block from the Simulink/Sources library. Then double­

click on the block and set the Step time to "0".

Insert a Scope block from the Simulink/Sinks library.

Then connect and label the components as shown in the following figure

You can download our version of the closed­loop system model here,
Motor_Model_lag.mdl.

Then run the simulation (press Ctrl­T or select Start from the Simulation
menu). When the simulation is finished, double­click on the scope and hit

its autoscale button. You should see the following output.

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This step response matches exactly the closed­loop performance

observed in the DC Motor Speed: Root Locus Controller Design page

where the lag compensator was originally designed. Note that while we
used the physics­based Simulink model developed in the DC Motor

Speed: Simulink Modeling page for simulating the closed­loop system, we

could have equivalently used the Simscape version of the DC motor
model.

Closed­loop response with lead compensator

We have shown in the above and in other pages of this example that the
lag compensator we have designed meets all of the given design

requirements. Instead of a lag compensator, we could have also designed

a lead compensator to meet the given requirements. More specifically, we

could have designed a lead compensator to achieve a similar DC gain

and phase margin to that achieved by the lag compensator, but with a
larger gain crossover frequency. You can refer back to the DC Motor

Speed: Frequency Domain Methods for Controller Design page for more

details on the design of the lag compensator, but the fact that the DC gains

and phase margins are similar indicate that the responses under lag and
lead control would have similar amounts of error in steady state and
similar amounts of overshoot. The difference in response would come in

that the larger gain crossover frequency provided by the lead compensator
would make the system response faster than with the lag compensator. We

will specifically use the following lead compensator.

(3)

To see the precise effect of the lead compensator as compared to our lag
compensator, let's modify our Simulink model from above as follows:
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Disconnect the Step block and Scope block from the rest of the model.

Copy the blocks forming the closed­loop of the model: the Sum block,
the Transfer Function block, and the DC Motor subsystem. Then paste

a copy of this loop below the original blocks.

Double­click on the Transfer Function block and edit the Numerator

coefficients field to "[160000 5.6e6]" and the Denominator

coefficients field to "[1 1035]".

Insert a Mux block from the Simulink\Signal Routing library and

connect the outputs of the two Motor subsystem blocks to the inputs of

the Mux and connect the output of the Mux to the Scope.

Connect the Step block to the Sum block of the original feedback
system. Then branch off from this line and connect it to the Sum block

of the lead compensated system as well.

The Mux block serves to bundle the two signals into a single line, this way

the Scope will plot both speed signals on the same set of axes. When you
are done, your model should appear as follows.

Running the simulation and observing the output produced by the scope,
you will see that both responses have a steady­state error that approaches
zero. Zooming in on the graphs you can generate a figure like the one

shown below. Comparing the two graphs, the purple response belonging
to the lead compensated system has a much smaller settle time and

slightly larger, but similar, overshoot as compared to the yellow response

produced by the lag compensated system.

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It is generally preferred that a system respond to a command quickly. Why

then might we prefer to use the lag compensator even though it is slower
than the lead compensator? The advantage of the lag compensator in this
case is that by responding more slowly it requires less control effort than

the lead compensator. Less control effort means that less power is
consumed and that the various components can be sized smaller since

they do not have to supply as much energy or withstand the higher

voltages and current required of the lead compensator.

We will now modify our simulation to explicitly observe the control effort
requirements of our two feedback systems. We will do this by sending our
various signals to the workspace for plotting and further manipulation if

desired. Specifically, delete the Scope and Mux blocks from your Simulink
model. Then insert four To Workspace blocks from the Simulink\Sinks

library. Double­click on each of the blocks and change their Save format
from Structure to Array. Also provide a Variable name within each block

that will make sense to you. You can then connect the blocks to the
existing model and label them as shown below. You can download our
version of this Simulink model here, Motor_Model_leadlag.mdl.

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Then change the simulation stop time to 1 second and run the model. The

act of running the simulation will send to the MATLAB workspace a series
of arrays corresponding to the variables set­up in your model with the To
Workspace blocks. Furthermore, the time vector used by that run of the

simulation is stored in the default variable tout. You can now plot the
results of your simulation from the workspace. Enter the following code to

see how to specifically plot the control effort variables.

subplot , ,
plot tout,ulag ;
xlabel 'time seconds '
ylabel 'control effort volts '

title 'Control Effort Under Lag Compensation'

subplot , ,
plot tout,ulead ;
xlabel 'time seconds '
ylabel 'control effort volts '

title 'Control Effort Under Lead Compensation'

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Examination of the above shows that the control effort required by the lead

compensator is above 150,000 Volts, which is well above anything that

could be supplied or withstood by a typical DC motor. This exemplifies the
tradeoff inherent between achieving small tracking error and keeping the

amount of control effort required small. Optimal control techniques have

been developed to achieve an optimal balance between competing goals.

One such technique is explored in the Aircraft Pitch: State Space Methods
for Controller Design page.

Published with MATLAB® 7.14

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