Performance Improvement of Drives by Nonlinear Cascaded Control

Cascaded PID control is still widespread in industrial applications due to its simplicity both for implementation and adaptation to the problem. This paper suggests to substitute it by cascaded nonlinear control, in particular integrator backstepping control, which retains the basic modular structure of cascade control but takes into account nonlinear effects and delivers better performance while remaining largely insensitive to parameter variations without excessive computational complexity. Experimental results of the control of an electromechanical actuator are presented and a simulation result of a permanent magnet synchronized motor is used to allow an estimation of the potential advantage.