Backstepping-based model reference adaptive controller for a multi-axial system in the presence of external disturbance and saturated input

This paper presents a backstepping-based model reference adaptive controller for a multi-axial system in the presence of external disturbance and saturated input. The proposed controller synthesizes the backstepping technique and the model reference adaptive control method to construct control inputs for recursive structure and uncertain modelling of the multi-axial system. To cope with the limit of saturated input, an auxiliary system is adopted. A dead-zone modification is introduced to avoid the drift phenomenon of adjusted adaptive parameters. The stability of the proposed controller is proven by Lyapunov’s theory while considering the effect of the auxiliary system and the dead-zone modification in the design stage. The effectiveness and performance of the proposed controller are evaluated by experiment on a transformer winding system.