Combined Robust Design and Robust Control of an Electric DC Motor

System performance can significantly benefit from optimally integrating the design and control of engineering systems. To improve the robustness properties of systems, this paper introduces an approach that combines robust design with robust control and investigates the coupling between them. However, the computational cost of improving this robustness can often be high due to the need to solve a resulting minimax design and control optimization problem. To reduce this cost, sequential and iterative strategies are proposed and compared to an all-in-one (Aio) strategy for solving the minimax problem. These strategies are then illustrated for a case study: Robust design and robust control (RDRC) of a dc motor. Results show that the resulting strategies can improve the robustness properties of the dc motor. In addition, the coupling strength between the robust design and robust control tends to increase as the applied level of uncertainty increases.