Application of Robust Antiwindup Techniques to Dynamically Substructured Systems

Dynamically substructured systems (DSS) play an important role in modern testing methods. DSS enables full-size critical components of a complete system to be tested physically in realtime, while the remaining parts of the system run in parallel as a real-time simulation. The performance of DSS testing is influenced by the synchronization of the physical and numerical substructures, which necessitates the design of a DSS controller. Since the testing signal is known and can be assumed to be a perfectly measured disturbance, the DSS control can be viewed as a regulation control problem with measured disturbance attenuation. A potential problem with DSS control arises from actuator saturation, which can be encountered in DSS transfer systems and can significantly influence the testing accuracy. This paper demonstrates the application of a novel robust disturbance rejection antiwindup (AW) technique, to cope with the actuator saturation problem in DSS. Implementation results from a hydraulically-actuated DSS test rig confirm the advantage of using this novel approach over some other existing AW approaches. Furthermore, some specific practical issues are discussed for the AW compensator design, such as the tuning of parameters.