A constructive procedure for energy shaping of port-Hamiltonian systems

Equilibrium stabilization of nonlinear systems via energy shaping is a well-established, robust, passivity based controller design technique. Unfortunately, its application is often stymied by the need to solve partial differential equations, which is usually a difficult task. In this paper a new, fully constructive, procedure to shape the energy for a class of port-Hamiltonian systems that obviates the solution of partial differential equations is proposed. Proceeding from the well-known passive, power shaping output we propose a nonlinear static state-feedback that preserves passivity of this output but with a new storage function. A suitable selection of a controller gain makes this function positive definite, hence it is a suitable Lyapunov function for the closed-loop. The resulting controller may be interpreted as a classical PI connections with other standard passivity-based controllers are also identified. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.