Position Tracking Control for Water Hydraulic Vane Actuator

The control of the water hydraulic vane actuator has direct influences on the performance of the water hydraulic system. In the paper, a variable structure control (VSC) has been proposed and applied to the position tracking control of a water hydraulic rotary actuator. Based on the model of the water hydraulic vane actuator, simulation experiments and comparisons have been done with VSC controller and PID controller, respectively. Simulation experiment results show that in position tracking control applications, the use of VSC as the controller of the system is able to improve the position tracking performance of the system. Especially, the VSC system provides stronger robustness to different reference inputs than the PID control system. The position tracking control properties of the water hydraulic rotary actuator validate the effectiveness of the proposed VSC.