MIMO control of the cutting system for trench cutter based on disturbance observer

In this paper, a novel cutting system of trench cutter (TC) is proposed and the simultaneous control of cutting velocity and supply pressure for the cutting system is presented. The cutting velocity and supply pressure control performance of the cutting system is subjected to the unknown load characteristics of rock or soil and time-varying operating conditions due to the particular characteristics of TC. Therefore, the control performance is significantly affected by the unknown time-varying load flow and load torque acting on the actuator. To improve the cutting velocity and supply pressure tracking performances in the presence of unknown time-varying disturbances, a disturbance observer is proposed to estimate the disturbances acting on the actuator. Based on the estimation, a MIMO nonlinear tracking controller is designed in this paper. Simulations are conducted on a co-simulation platform with the proposed controller under different operating conditions. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed controller gives a superior and robust cutting velocity and supply pressure tracking performance.