Technical Articles

Robust Design of Control Systems with Physical System Variances

By Tom Egel, MathWorks


Today's automotive control system engineering requires precision and accuracy. The cost of a controller designed with conservative margins may increase significantly, causing the design to be less competitive when produced and marketed. On the other hand, a design with too little margin may lead to system malfunction under marginal environment conditions or due to component aging. A robust design is one that is immune to the effects of component variance due to tolerance, temperature, and aging, among other factors. Achieving a robust design involves careful analysis of the controller and plant operating together.

This paper discusses how MATLAB® and Simulink® can be leveraged to ensure the robustness of a mechatronic system design. The merits of modeling physical systems with the network approach as an alternative to the signal flow (block diagram) approach are also discussed. Finally, the advantages of integrating these methods within the Simulink environment when using Model-Based Design with mechatronic systems are presented. An example involving Monte Carlo simulation on a simple multidomain mechatronic control system is used as a case study.

Copyright © 2009 by The MathWorks, Inc. Published by SAE International, with permission.

This paper was presented at SAE World Congress.

Read full paper.

Published 2009

View Articles for Related Capabilities

View Articles for Related Industries