Finite-time sliding mode controller for perturbed second-order systems

This paper presents a novel finite-time sliding mode controller applied to perturbed second order systems. The proposed scheme employs a disturbance observer that can identify growing in time disturbances. Then, the observer is combined with a sliding mode controller to achieve finite-time stabilization of the second-order system. The convergence of the observer as well as the finite-time stability of the closed-loop system is theoretically demonstrated. Besides, it is also shown that the finite-time convergence properties of a given controller can be enhanced when using a compensation term based on the disturbance observer. The proposed controller is compared with a twisting algorithm and a finite-time sliding mode controller with disturbance estimation. Also, a conventional proportional integral derivative (PID) controller is combined with the proposed disturbance observer in a trajectory tracking task. Numerical simulations indicate that the proposed controller attains finite-time stabilization of the second order system by requiring a less amount of power than that demanded by the other control schemes and without being affected by the peaking phenomenon. Besides, the performance of the PID technique is enhanced by applying the proposed control methodology.