Discrete sliding control of a coupled-drives apparatus with optimal sliding surface and switching gain

Details the design and experimental implementation of a practical discrete-time version of a sliding-mode controller. The controller is derived and proven robustly stable to bounded plant modelling errors and exogenous disturbances. Sliding-surface design is treated as an energy minimisation problem where state energy during sliding on the surface is minimised according to a linear quadratic measure. Analysis of the properties of the control system lead to static and dynamic optimal switching gains. Application of the controller to simulated and experimental versions of a coupled-drives apparatus provide evidence of the robust performance and stability of the controller with classical linear quadratic optimal control. Also demonstrated is the compared effectiveness of the dynamic optimal switching gain.