Performance Evaluation of D.C Motor Speed Using Sliding Mode Controller (SMC)

Abstract

Direct current (DC) motors are widely used in many industrial applications such as electric cars, electric winches, steel works, robotic manipulators, and home applications as compared to AC motors. DC motors do have electrical parameters that changes such as temperature, current and voltage fluctuations, time varying loading conditions. These changes make the DC motors have non-linear characteristics and pretty difficult in controlling its speed. This study is centered on performance evaluation of D.C motor speed using Sliding Mode Controller.  DC motors are controlled by changing the field current or armature voltage. Sliding mode control (SMC) is insensitive in the presence of external disturbances and uncertainties. The speed controller is modeled with a transfer function equation in a MATLAB/Simulink environment and is observed that the SMC controller has a good performance for it has a settling time of  1.777sec, this shows that the SMC is fast and is effective in controlling the speed of a D.C motor. The study shows that SMC has a slow rise time of 2.5secs with zero under and overshoot thus, SMC is proved efficient in controlling DC motor since external disturbances are controlled and eliminated.