Constrained real-time control of hydromechanical powertrains – methodology and practical application

Axial piston motors and pumps are core components in many hydromechanical systems as for instance the powertrain of wheel loader vehicles. The optimal performance of the individual components as well as the entire powertrain requires a fast and exact control of both the motor’s swivel angle as well as the pressure difference over the pump by means of the currently available information and despite their respective a-priori unknown reference signal generated by the driver with a joystick or gas pedal operation. Therefore, it is essential that the swivel angle and pressure controllers fully exploit the possible dynamics and the constrained resources of the nonlinear swivel angle displacement and the pressure adjustment system, respectively. In this work, a flatness-based feedforward control strategy for the motor’s swivel angle as well as a flatness-based tracking two-degree-of-freedom controller for the pump pressure are proposed. For the realization of the flat feedforward and the tracking controller, a constrained online trajectory generation by means of a nonlinear (switched) state variable filter is designed for each. Therefore, both controllers are capable of considering the relevant state and input constraints in real-time and without relying on an online optimization. The proposed control algorithms are both discussed and their performance is illustrated with measurement data from a wheel loader vehicle.