A novel wideband control scheme for uncertain multi-mass systems and its application to drivetrain benches

In multi-mass systems, torsional vibration is a common and annoying phenomenon. Effective vibration suppression and robustness to wide-range parameter variations are essential for a sound motion system. However, most control methods focus on the primary resonance mode, and the high-order resonance modes are not actively treated in the control design, resulting in the control bandwidth not being high enough and limiting the control performance. This paper proposes a novel two-stage design scheme to realize a wideband control to improve control performance. First, a hybrid uncertainty model is tailored for multi-mass systems, which uses an equivalent and uncertain spring constant to describe the variation of the primary mode and a dynamic uncertainty to cover the other resonance modes. This hybrid model strikes a better balance between the model conservatism and the feasibility of a less conservative design. Then, the passivity of the parameter uncertainty is utilized to conduct a phase compensation on the nominal system. After the phase compensation, all uncertainties are converted into norm-bounded ones, and the robust performance design is carried out. This method is applied to vehicle drivetrain benches, and its superiority is validated through simulation comparisons and experiments on two typical types of drivetrain benches.