Second-order adaptive robust control of proportional pressure-reducing valves using phenomenological model

Proportional pressure-reducing valve (PPRV) is widely used in brake circuits and pilot supply lines for directional control valves. The performance of PPRV can be degraded because of the effect of magnetic hysteresis, frictions, and other disturbances, which worsens the accuracy of the entire hydraulic system. This paper presents a high-performance pressure controller of a PPRV considering the model nonlinearities. A nonlinear phenomenological model based on the Hammerstein modeling method is first developed to describe the dynamics of a PPRV. A pressure-dependent damping ratio is carried out to handle the asymmetric nonlinearity at the starting process of pressure adjustments, and a series of experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the model. A second-order adaptive robust controller is developed based on the Lyapunov theorem to guarantee the tracking performance in the presence of parameter uncertainties and uncertain nonlinearities. Comparative experiments show that the proposed second-order adaptive robust control algorithm together with the phenomenological model achieves a significant reduction in pressure-tracking error, compared with the one without the proposed plant model, or other existing controllers such as the feedforward proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller and the first-order adaptive robust controller.