Dynamic emulation of multi-mass mechanical loads in electric drives

This paper presents a straightforward method for dynamic emulation of multi-mass systems. The test bench consists of a driving motor coupled rigidly to a load servo motor, and the torque reference of the servo motor is controlled based on the dynamic model to be emulated. No additional measurements are needed, but the mechanical parameters of the test bench and the torque estimate of the driving motor have to be known. The use of the torque estimate makes it possible to avoid using any differentiations or controller compensation terms in the emulator. The experimental results show that the emulator can model the dynamics of the multi-mass mechanical load with a good accuracy. In addition, the robustness against the mechanical parameter inaccuracies is good.