Search results

The purpose of this paper is to describe the dynamic development of technical controls in different companies and to interpret the observations using Van de Ven and Poole's typology of change process theories.

Case study data were obtained through semi‐structured interviews, observation and document analysis in three organisations (Company A, Company B and Company C).

The paper highlights the life‐cycle development of technical controls, where controls are implemented, improved and eventually removed. It highlights the fact that the progression through the life‐cycle can follow either a dialectical motor of change based on conflict or a teleological motor of change based on consensus.

The findings of the paper enhance the theory of rules developed by March et al., by providing insight into how change actually occurs, i.e. how inertia is broken.

The paper offers practitioners some guidelines for the management of their control systems to help them maintain more effective and efficient control systems.

The paper explains that under a teleological motor of change, inertia is broken more easily than under a dialectical one, because there is less tolerance for control obsolescence, hence improvement and removal of obsolete controls are more likely to occur. This is important for listed organisations having to implement more and more technical controls to comply with laws such as SOX. The paper also suggests that the life‐cycle is not a “motor” of change as suggested by Van de Ven and Poole, because it cannot explain how inertia is broken.

This study aims to improve the maneuverability and stability of four-wheel chassis in a small paddy field; a front axle swing steering four-wheel chassis with optimal steering is designed.

When turning, the front inner wheel stops and the rear inner wheel is in the following state. The hydraulic drive system of the walking wheel adopts a driving mode in which two front-wheel motors are connected in series and two rear wheel motors in parallel. The chassis uses a combination of a gasoline engine with a water cooling system, a CVT continuously variable transmission and a hydraulic drive system to increase the control capability. The front axle rotary chassis adopts a step-less variable speed engine and a hydraulic control system to solve the hydraulic stability of the chassis in uphill and downhill conditions so as to effectively control the over-speed of the wheel-side drive motors. Through the quadratic orthogonal rotation combination design test, the mathematical models of uphill and downhill front-wheel pressures and test factors are established.

The results show that the chassis stability is optimal when the back pressure is 0.5 MPa, and the rotating slope is 4°. The uphill and downhill pressures of the front wheels are 2.38 MPa and 1.5 MPa, respectively.

The influence of external changes on the pressure of hydraulic motors is studied through experiments, which lays the foundation for further research.

Discusses the 27 papers in ISEF 1999 Proceedings on the subject of electromagnetisms. States the groups of papers cover such subjects within the discipline as: induction machines; reluctance motors; PM motors; transformers and reactors; and special problems and applications. Debates all of these in great detail and itemizes each with greater in‐depth discussion of the various technical applications and areas. Concludes that the recommendations made should be adhered to.

Internal leakage is one of the key factors that influence the super-low speed performance of continuous rotary electro-hydraulic servo motor. Therefore, this paper aims to study the change rule of internal leakage for improving the low speed performance of motor.

The mathematical models of internal leakage of continuous rotary electro-hydraulic servo motor were established, and according to the working principle of the motor, the 3D models of internal leakage location were established. Simulation analysis was implemented on the continuous rotary electro-hydraulic servo motor by the finite element analysis software ANSYS based on the fluid-structure interaction theory.

The results show the deformation of motor’s key parts and the changing rule of internal leakage. The effect of the leakage to the low speed performance of electro-hydraulic servo motor was analyzed, and at the same time, the motor’s leakage experiment was also conducted to verify the validity of simulation results.

This paper lays the foundation for improving the low speed performance of motor.

Electric motor heating during biomass recovery and its handling on conveyor is a serious concern for the motor performance. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to design and develop a hardware prototype of master–slave electric motors based biomass conveyor system to use the motors under normal operating conditions without overheating.

The hardware prototype of the system used master–slave electric motors for embedded controller operated robotic arm to automatically replace conveyor motors by one another. A mixed signal based embedded controller (C8051F226DK), fully compliant with IEEE 1149.1 specifications, was used to operate the entire system. A precise temperature measurement of motor with the help of negative temperature coefficient sensor was possible due to the utilization of industry standard temperature controller (N76E003AT20). Also, a pulse width modulation based speed control was achieved for master–slave motors of biomass conveyor.

As compared to conventional energy based mains supply, the system is self-sufficient to extract more energy from solar supply with an energy increase of 11.38%. With respect to conventional energy based \ of 47.31%, solar energy based higher energy saving of 52.69% was reported. Also, the work achieved higher temperature reduction of 34.26% of the motor as compared to previous cooling options.

The proposed technique is free from air, liquid and phase-changing material based cooling materials. As a consequence, the work prevents the wastage of these materials and does not cause the risk of health hazards. Also, the motors are used with their original dimensions without facing any leakage problems.

This paper aims to obtain an accurate and robust estimation method of the rotor flux and speed for the sensorless induction motor (IM) drive.

The reduced order observer has been used as an online tuned rotor flux model in the model reference adaptive system (MRAS) concept applied for the IM speed estimation. The output of this observer was used also as a feedback signal required in the direct field‐oriented control (DFOC) structure of the IM.

It is shown that a new rotor flux and speed estimator are more robust to motor parameter changes in comparison with the classical MRAS estimator and can work stably in the DFOC structure, in the wide speed range, even for relatively high (50 per cent) identification errors of equivalent circuit parameters of the IM.

The investigation looked mainly at the estimation accuracy performance and whole system stability while economic issues will still need to be addressed.

The proposed new improved MRAS speed estimator can be easily realised using modern digital signal processors. The implementation was tested in an experimental set‐up with floating point DSP used as the system controller. The fixed‐point realisation needs to be developed to obtain the practical application in the industrial drive systems.

The application of the reduced order flux observer as a tuned flux model in the MRAS type speed estimator instead of the simple, but very sensitive to motor parameter uncertainties, current flux model, enables much better accuracy and stability of the rotor speed estimation in the complex DFOC structure than in the case of classical MRAS estimator.

An improved simulation model of switched reluctance motor (SRM) for steady-state operation that considers the core losses in the stator and rotor is established to obtain the steady performance of the high-speed SRM during the design, analysis and control of SRM driving system more accurately.

The transient core loss model for the material and SRM is presented. Then a new method for calculating the flux density of the motor in real time is introduced, and a steady-state simulation model of the SRM including real-time transient core losses calculation model is established according to the transient flux density. Because the transient core losses calculated by above method are the total core losses of the motor, a core losses distribution method is proposed and the steady-state simulation model of the SRM including the distributed core losses’ effect on the phase winding is established.

The comparison results show that the proposed model has higher accuracy than the traditional model, excluding core losses, especially at the moments when phase voltage is turn-on and turn-off. The proportion of the core losses to the motor losses increases with the increase in speed. So, the core losses’ effect on the steady-state performance of the high-speed SRM cannot be ignored.

The method to obtain flux density in the real time is presented and the improved steady-state simulation model of SRM that considering transient core losses is proposed.

Permanent magnet synchronous spherical motors can have wide use in robotics and industrial automation. They enable three-DOF omnidirectional motion of their rotor. They are suitable for several applications, such as actuation in robotics, traction in electric vehicles and use in several automation systems. Unlike conventional synchronous motors, permanent magnet synchronous spherical motors consist of a fixed inner shell, which is the stator, and a rotating outer shell, which is the rotor. Their dynamic model is multivariable and strongly nonlinear. The treatment of the associated control problem is important.

In this paper, the multivariable dynamic model of permanent magnet synchronous spherical motors is analysed, and a nonlinear optimal (H-infinity) control method is developed for it. Differential flatness properties are proven for the spherical motors’ state-space model. Next, the motors’ state-space description undergoes approximate linearization with the use of first-order Taylor series expansion and through the computation of the associated Jacobian matrices. The linearization process takes place at each sampling instance around a time-varying operating point, which is defined by the present value of the motors’ state vector and by the last sampled value of the control input vector. For the approximately linearized model of the permanent magnet synchronous spherical motors, a stabilizing H-infinity feedback controller is designed. To compute the controller’s gains, an algebraic Riccati equation has to be repetitively solved at each time-step of the control algorithm. The global stability properties of the control scheme are proven through Lyapunov analysis. Finally, the performance of the nonlinear optimal control method is compared against a flatness-based control approach implemented in successive loops.

Due to the nonlinear and multivariable structure of the state-space model of spherical motors, the solution of the associated nonlinear control problem is a nontrivial task. In this paper, a novel nonlinear optimal (H-infinity) control approach is proposed for the dynamic model of permanent magnet synchronous spherical motors. The method is based on approximate linearization of the motor’s state-space model with the use of first-order Taylor series expansion and the computation of the associated Jacobian matrices. Furthermore, the paper has introduced a different solution to the nonlinear control problem of the permanent magnet synchronous spherical motor, which is based on flatness-based control implemented in successive loops.

The presented control approaches do not exhibit any limitations, but on the contrary, they have specific advantages. In comparison to global linearization-based control schemes (such as Lie-algebra-based control), they do not make use of complicated changes of state variables (diffeomorphisms) and transformations of the system's state-space description. The computed control inputs are applied directly to the initial nonlinear state-space model of the permanent magnet spherical motor without the intervention of inverse transformations and thus without coming against the risk of singularities.

The motion control problem of spherical motors is nontrivial because of the complicated nonlinear and multivariable dynamics of these electric machines. So far, there have been several attempts to apply nonlinear feedback control to permanent magnet-synchronous spherical motors. However, due to the model’s complexity, few results exist about the associated nonlinear optimal control problem. The proposed nonlinear control methods for permanent magnet synchronous spherical motors make more efficient, precise and reliable the use of such motors in robotics, electric traction and several automation systems.

The treated research topic is central for robotic and industrial automation. Permanent magnet synchronous spherical motors are suitable for several applications, such as actuation in robotics, traction in electric vehicles and use in several automation systems. The solution of the control problem for the nonlinear dynamic model of permanent magnet synchronous spherical motors has many industrial applications and therefore contributes to economic growth and development.

The proposed nonlinear optimal control method is novel compared to past attempts to solve the optimal control problem for nonlinear dynamical systems. Unlike past approaches, in the new nonlinear optimal control method, linearization is performed around a temporary operating point, which is defined by the present value of the system's state vector and by the last sampled value of the control inputs vector and not at points that belong to the desirable trajectory (setpoints). Besides, the Riccati equation which is used for computing the feedback gains of the controller is new, and so is the global stability proof for this control method. Compared to nonlinear model predictive control, which is a popular approach for treating the optimal control problem in industry, the new nonlinear optimal (H-infinity) control scheme is of proven global stability, and the convergence of its iterative search for the optimum does not depend on initial conditions and trials with multiple sets of controller parameters. It is also noteworthy that the nonlinear optimal control method is applicable to a wider class of dynamical systems than approaches based on the solution of state dependent Riccati equations (SDRE). The SDRE approaches can be applied only to dynamical systems which can be transformed into the linear parameter varying form. Besides, the nonlinear optimal control method performs better than nonlinear optimal control schemes, which use approximation of the solution of the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation by Galerkin series expansions. Furthermore, the second control method proposed in this paper, which is flatness-based control in successive loops, is also novel and demonstrates substantial contribution to nonlinear control for robotics and industrial automation.

This study consists of an examination of productivity growth following three major technological breakthroughs: the steam power revolution, electrification and the ICT revolution. The distinction between sectors producing and sectors using the new technology is emphasized. A major finding for all breakthroughs is that there is a long lag from the time of the original invention until a substantial increase in the rate of productivity growth can be observed. There is also strong evidence of rapid price decreases for steam engines, electricity, electric motors and ICT products. However, there is no persuasive direct evidence that the steam engine producing industry and electric machinery had particularly high productivity growth rates. For the ICT revolution the highest productivity growth rates are found in the ICT-producing industries. We suggest that one explanation could be that hedonic price indexes are not used for the steam engine and the electric motor. Still, it is likely that the rate of technological development has been much more rapid during the ICT revolution compared to any of the previous breakthroughs.