Position Control Study on Pump-Controlled Servomotor for Steam Control Valve

In steam turbine control and actuation, the steam control valve plays a key role in operability and reliability. The electrohydraulic regulating system for the steam control valve, usually called the servomotor, needs to be reliable and high performing under nonlinear excitation interference in actual conditions. Currently, electrohydraulic servo valve control technology is widely used in servomotors. Although this technology has good control performance, it still has some technical defects, such as poor antipollution ability, low energy efficiency, large volume size, and limited installation space. Aiming at the abovementioned technical shortcomings of electrohydraulic servo valve control technology, a servomotor-pump-hydraulic cylinder volume control scheme is proposed in this paper, forming a pump-controlled servomotor for the steam control valve. By analyzing the working principle of the pump-controlled servomotor position control in the steam control valve, the mathematical model of a pump-controlled servomotor for the steam control valve is established. The sliding mode variable structure control strategy is proposed, and the variable structure control law is solved by constructing a switching function. To verify the performance of the proposed control method, experimental research was conducted. The research results show that the proposed sliding mode variable structure control strategy has a good control effect, which lays the theoretical and technical foundation for the engineering application and promotion of pump-controlled servomotors for steam control valves and helps the technical upgrade and product optimization of steam turbines.