Motion control of the rail traction system by dual brushless AC motors using a disturbance observer

This study presents an accurate motion control scheme using a modified non-linear disturbance torque observer for a rail traction system driven by a dual brushless AC (BLAC) motor. The target application has two BLAC motors mounted on the top surface of the rail. The mover translation along the rail is handled solely by the traction motors without any external sensor. In the low-speed range, however, the conventional disturbance torque observer is unstable due to the resolution of the Hall sensor and speed detection delay. To solve this instability problem, a simple weight function with the synchronisation of torque current and the delayed speed feedback is added to the proposed torque observer. This way, zero output can be created in the selected speed region for stabilisation and torque current can be compensated. Furthermore, simple balance error compensation to synchronise both motors is added to the proposed speed and position model reference adaptive control scheme. The experiments were performed to verify the proposed control method. The results show advanced performance with reduced position and balance errors between the two BLAC motors and an improved overall control performance of the rail mover.