Design of a DC motor current controller using a sliding mode disturbance observer and controller

Using a sliding mode controller and observer techniques, this paper presents a robust current controller for a DC motor in the presence of parametric uncertainties. One of the most important issues in the practical application of sliding mode schemes is the chattering phenomenon caused by switching actions. This paper presents a novel sliding mode controller that incorporates an integral control with a sliding mode disturbance observer to attenuate the chattering by reducing the controller/observer switching gains. The proposed sliding mode disturbance observer is designed to estimate a relatively slow varying signal in the equivalent lumped disturbance owing to system uncertainties. Combining the estimated uncertainty with the sliding mode control input, the proposed controller can achieve the control objective by using the relatively low gain of the controller. The proposed disturbance observer does not include the switching control input of the baseline sliding mode controller to reduce the observer switching gain. In the proposed approach, the integral sliding mode control is used to improve the steady state control performance. Comparative computer simulations are carried out to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. Through the simulation results, the proposed controller realizes the robust performance with reduced current ripples. © ICROS 2016.