Analysis and performance improvement of motor speed control system with nonlinear friction

Solid friction in machine elements is one of the dominant nonlinearities affecting the control accuracy of servo drive systems. Many schemes, including feedforward control, observer-based control and repetitive learning control have been proposed to compensate for nonlinear friction. These schemes show superior performance compared to that of the conventional P- and/or PI-controller; however, friction model errors and bandwidth restriction of the observer cause compensation errors, thus decreasing control accuracy. This paper presents a new control algorithm for performance improvement of a motor speed control system having nonlinear friction. By analyzing characteristics of conventional compensation control schemes during velocity reversal, the relation between control parameters and control accuracy is examined so as to explore problems with each scheme. Based on these analyses, a new feedforward control algorithm is proposed. The proposed algorithm is verified by analyses of control characteristics and experiments using a prototype. Experimental results show the superior performance improvement of the proposed algorithm.