Mechanical Impedance Control of Rotatory Test Beds

In this paper, impedance control for rotatory test beds is presented and discussed. Its goal is highly realistic testing of rotating machinery such as combustion engines through hardware-in-the-loop simulation. As rotatory test beds are typical examples of elastic drive systems, modeling and control of the oscillations arising on the test bed are of great importance. Additionally, a so-called impedance model emulates real-world operating conditions and delivers the load for the unit under test, which is then imposed using an appropriate controller. Specifically, in this paper, model predictive control (MPC) was chosen as it allows for high dynamic control including a priori consideration of constraints. In addition to the MPC, a control Lyapunov function based controller is proposed, resulting in guaranteed closed-loop stability even when active constraints prevent the use of classic MPC stability criteria. Finally, simulations and experimental results achieved on a laboratory setup as well as on an industrial test bed illustrate the efficiency of the proposed control scheme.