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fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TASC.2016.2611623, IEEE
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Novel Composite Sliding Mode Control for PMSM
Drive System Based on Disturbance Observer
Wei Xu, Senior Member, IEEE, Yajie Jiang, and Chaoxu Mu, Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper introduces a sliding mode control (SMC)
scheme to solve time-varying parameters and disturbances for
permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drive system. A
new speed controller is designed by the nonsingular terminal
sliding mode control (NTSMC) strategy with the disturbance
observer (DOB). The controller can make the motor speed reach
the reference value in finite time, accompanying with a faster
convergence and a better tracking precision. Considering the
time-varying characteristic and the high-bandwidth property of
the uncertainties and disturbances in a practical PMSM drive
system, the common SMC method needs to provide large gain to
restrain disturbance with large chattering. A DOB is introduced
as a compensator to resist disturbance and to reduce control
gains. By applying a disturbance observer as the feed-forward
compensator and the NTSMC as the feedback controller, one
new composite NTSMC (CNTSMC) scheme has been proposed
for the speed control of PMSM under disturbances and
uncertainties with small chattering since smaller switching gain
are required by the proposed scheme. The validity and
robustness of the scheme are fully verified by comprehensive
simulations and experiments.
 presence of time varying load.
Keywords—Composite nonsingular terminal sliding mode
control (CNTSMC), permanent magnet synchronous motors
(PMSMs), disturbance observer (DOB), speed regulation, vector
control.
I. INTRODUCTION
A mong various types of ac motors, the permanent-magnet
synchronous motor (PMSM) has received widespread
acceptance in industrial applications due to some of its
advantageous features, such as high efficiency, high torque-to-
current ratio, low noise, and robustness. Because of time-
varying parameters and disturbances, how to control PMSM
effectively is a nontrivial topic of ac drives [1]-[4].
Recent years, various methods of nonlinear control theory
have been used in the PMSM control system, such as adaptive
control [5]-[6], active disturbance rejection control [7], fuzzy
control [8], predictive control [9], robust control [10]-[11], and
variable structure control [12]-[13] etc. These advanced
nonlinear control methods have improved the performance of
the PMSM system from different aspects. Recently, much
attention has been given to nonsingular terminal sliding mode
Manuscript received January 05 , 2016. This work has been supported by
National Natural Science Foundation (No. 51377065, 61301035, 61304086
and 6141130160) and Hubei Province Science and Technology Supporting
Program (2014BAA035).
Wei Xu and Yajie Jiang are with the School of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan,
430074, China (e-mail: weixu@hust.edu.cn; yajiejiang@foxmail.com).
Chaoxu Mu (Corresponding author) is with the Department of Electrical
Engineering and Automation, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China (e-
mail: cxmu@tju.edu.cn).
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1
control (NTSMC), which is insensitive to parameter variations
and disturbances. NTSMC not only has advantages in fast
dynamic response, finite time convergence, and high control
precision, but also can eliminate the paranormal phenomenon
of control system [14]-[15].
As the upper bound of lumped disturbances is not easy to be
determined, which could worsen the chattering phenomenon of
SMC strategy in PMSM system [16]-[18]. Introducing
feedforward compensate technology into controller is one
efficient way of improving system performance. Feedforward
compensation helps to select smaller value for the switching
gain of NTSMC and reduce chattering [18]-[20]. Thus, if
disturbance are observed and given feed-forward compensation
based on the observed value, and the switching gain required
just needs to be larger than the upper bound of the disturbance
compensation error [21]-[23]. Using the disturbance observer
(DOB), the system chattering will be reduced effectively, and it
can obtain faster speed responses and smaller ripple in the
A speed controller based on NTSMC in combination with a
disturbance observer is designed in this paper [24]-[25]. Finally,
a new composite nonsingular terminal sliding mode control
(CNTSMC) scheme is developed for the PMSM drive system.
Simulation and experiment results demonstrate the new control
method has excellent robustness and dynamic response ability.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2,
the mathematical model of PMSM as well as the problem
statement are presented. Section 3 describes the mathematical
mode of NTSMC, followed by the design and analysis of DOB.
The main results of the DOB based on CNTSMC is presented
and analyzed in Section 4. Finally, conclusions are given in
Section 5.
II. DESCRIPTION OF PMSM MODE WITH DISTURBANCE
In general, the mathematical model of PMSM in the d-q
reference coordination is described as [5], [21]
 R u
id   L id  n piq  L
s d
 d d
 R n u
iq   n p id  iq   (1)
s p f q
 L q
L L q q
 1.5n  B T
  iq   
p f l
 J J J
where id and iq are d- and q-axis stator currents, id and iq the
corresponding derivatives, L d and L q d- and q-axis stator
inductances, u d and u q d-and q-axis stator voltages, R s the
stator resistance,  the rotor angular velocity, n p the number
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of pole pairs,  f the flux linkage, Tl the load torque, B the iq* PI
  uq*
viscous friction coefficient, and J the moment of inertia. id Ld
From (1), the relationship between the angular velocity  
and q-axis current iq can be written as iq Lq
  ud*
1.5n p f B T id*
  iq   l (2) PI
J J J Fig. 2. The diagram of current feedforward decoupling
Applying Laplace transformation to (1), it can be reasonably A. Design of Sliding Mode Controller for PMSM Speed
given as Modulation
1 kf k
U (1  i )iq* (3) For the speed regulation control of PMSM, the sliding mode
s J kps variable v is designed as the function of regulation error,
Then it can obtain a second order angular velocity model by denoted as e   *   , where  * is the reference angular
Bk  k J kB k T kT velocity, and  the real angular velocity. Thus, the states of
  U  p i   i   f uq  l  i l (4)
kp J kp J kp J kp J kp J PMSM speed error system are x1  e and x2  e . The dynamic
where k f  1.5n p f , k p and ki are the proportional and equation of the PMSM system is obtained as
 x1  x2
integral gains of PI controller in the current loop of iq , and the
 Bk p  ki J (8)
 x2    k p J   k p J   d (t )  U
* ki B
reference current is iq* .
In order to make simplification, it is defined that The NTSM variable is defined as
kf T kT 1
d (t )  uq  l  i l v  x1  x2p q (9)
(5) 
kp J kp J kp J
where  is a positive constant, p and q odd number,
Eq. (5) is considered as uncertainties and disturbances.
Combining (4) and (5), then it will get 0  q  p . By combining (8) and (9), it will get the full
Bk  k J kB expression for the NTSM controller, as written by
  U  p i   i   d (t ) (6) k q
kp J kp J U  *  i  *   x22  p q  ksat (v) (10)
kp p
The speed regulation of PMSM system is based on vector
control theory. In order to approximately eliminate the The design diagram of speed controller is shown in Fig. 3, in
coupling between the angular velocity and stator currents, the which the generalized plant represents the two current loops
d-axis reference current id* is set as 0. Fig. 1 shows the typical including PMSM and other components.
vector control structure for PMSM system, in which the current
and speed control loops are decoupled. * U kp J
SMC Generalized
 *
iq* uq* u Controller k f ( k p s  ki ) Plant
Speed
Controller
PI
 

Inverse
iq  IGBT
PMSM
 *
Park PWM
Inverter
id ud* Transform u
0 PI
id


Sensor
i ia Fig. 3. The NTSMC scheme of PMSM system.
Park Cark
i ib
Transform Transform
Generalized Plant B. Disturbance Observer and Disturbance Compensation for
Sensor PMSM System
Fig. 1. The CNTSMC control diagram of PMSM system. The SMC is essentially a kind of switching control, which
uses discontinuous terms to restrict the impact from external
III. COMPOSITE NTSMC ALGORITHM FOR PMSM SYSTEM disturbances and parameter variations. In general, the required
Using the description in (1), the voltage equations can be switching gain value must be larger than the upper bound of
presented in the d-q reference frame, as given by the lumped disturbances. Thus, if disturbances are observed
 dLd and then are feed-forward compensated, the required switching
ud  ( Rs  dt )id   Lq iq gain just needs to be larger than the upper bound of the
 (7) disturbance compensation error, which is usually much smaller
u  ( R  dLq )i   L i
 q s
dt
q d d than that of the lumped disturbance, such that the system
In order to achieve more precise control for PMSM, the chattering will be reduced effectively.
current feedforward decoupling is adapted to the CNTSMC as For a continuous function x(t ) , if it is ( n  1)th differential
shown in Fig 2. and zero input noises, the exact finite time observer for
x(t ) , x (t ) ,   , x ( n ) (t ) can be established as

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 z  v , v   K n11 z  x n1 sgn( z  x)  z

n
A. Simulation Results
 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
In order to verify the control performance, the reference
 z  v , v   K 1n z  v nn1 sgn( z  v )  z 50( t  0.5) 1 50( t  0.8) 1
 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 2

... (11) speed is given as  *  180  14 * e 50( t 0.5) 1  20 * e 50( t  0.8) 1 rad/s,
 1 1 and torque Te  4sin(8t ) Nm. The angular velocity and torque
 zn 1  vn 1 , vn 1   n 1 K zn 1  vn  2 sgn( zn 1  vn  2 )  zm
2 2

 z   K sgn( z  v ) are time varying simultaneously, which can simulate the time-
 p n n n 1
varying nature and the uncertainties in a practical PMSM drive
with enough large parameters i , i  0, , n , z0 , z1 ,  zn can system. Simulations about the CNTSMC and NTSMC schemes
of PMSM system have been done as shown in Figs. 5 and 6,
converge to x(t ), x (t ), , x ( n ) (t ) in finite time. A second order respectively.
finite time disturbance observer can be further developed from
(11), as described by
 Bk  k J kB
 z0  v0    k J (  x2 )  U  k J 
* p * i i

 p p

v   K 13 z  x 23 sgn( z  x )  z
 0 0 0 2 0 2 1
 Fig. 5. Speed response under the NTSMC/CNTSMC method.
 z1  v1 (12)
 1 1
As shown in Fig. 5, the black dot curve describes the
v1  1 K z1  v0 sgn( z1  v0 )  z2
2 2

 z   K sgn( z  v ) reference speed, red curve describes the control performance

 2 2 2 1
based on NTSMC, and the blue curve the control performance
 based on the proposed CNTSMC method. It can be seen that
where 0 , 1 , 2 are the observer coefficients to be designed. the speed of PMSM system under the CNTSMC scheme can
The observer errors are defined as  0  z0  x2 , 1  z1  d (t ) , track reference speed very well, whose speed response is fast.
Unfortunately, the speed performance of NTSMC is poor,
and   z  d (t ) . The observer error equations are described
2 2 which needs more time to get approaching to regulate to the
by reference value, and undergoes a bit tracking error.
   K 13  3 sgn( )  
2

 0 0 0 0 1
 1 1

1  1 K 1  0 sgn(1  0 )   2 (13)

2 2


2  2 K sgn( 2  1 )    K , K 

The design for disturbance observer is here completed, and
(a)
its specific stability analysis can refer to [24]-[25]. The
composite control scheme of PMSM system is shown in Fig. 4,
where D̂ is the compensation produced by DOB.
* Sliding mode U Generalized
controller (3) (10). Plant

D̂    (b)

Disturbance
observer (12).
Fig. 4. CNTSMC scheme based on NTSMC and DOB.

IV. SIMULATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS (c)

*
Fig. 6. id , iq and i in the PMSM system. (a). d-axis stator current. (b). q-axis
Comprehensive simulations have been done in this section, q

and main parameters of PMSM are summarized in Table I. stator current. (c). q-axis reference stator current.

The comparison of Fig. 6 (a) shows that id based on

TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF THE PMSM. NTSMC is varied severely, while id under CNTSMC is stable
Parameters Quantity
Rated power 3 KW
and closed to id*  0 . iq is sinusoidal as the waveform of load
Number of poles 3 torque based on vector control theory, but the chattering of
Armature resistance 0.8 
Rotor flux linkage 0.35 Wb
NTSMC is larger as depicted in Fig. 6 (b). Furthermore, as
Stator inductance 0.005 H using smaller switching gain and adding DOB for feed-forward
Viscous damping 7.403*10-5 N·m·s/rad compensation, the closed loop system under CNTSMC shows
Moment of inertia 3.78*10-4 kg/m3

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little chattering. Fig. 6 (c) gives out the q-axis reference stator
current, which is the output of speed controller. Compared with
NTSMC, the output of CNTSMC is smaller, and fluctuates
around zero, which indicates that the control effects are
excellent. The output of NTSMC is larger, but the tracking
response for q-axis current is a little weak. Hence, by careful
investigation and analysis, it is known the CNTSMC method
has better robustness ability when angular velocity and torque
are time varying simultaneously.
B. Experimental Verification
Relevant experiments have be done in TMS320F28335
digital control board, and the experimental bench is shown in
Fig. 7.

Fig. 7. Experimental bench.

In order to verify dynamic performance of CNTSMC, the
first experiment has presented the control performance of
CNTSMC with the load change of 14.3 Nm under the 500
r/min speed. Fig. 8 shows the dynamic performance of d and q
axis current response based on CNTSMC system. It can be
noted that the current response of CNTSMC system is more
quickly, and its ripple is smaller.
Fig. 9. Dynamic performance based on CNTSMC with changing speed
commanded. (a) d- and q- axis current. (b) Speed. (c) Phase current.
The steady state d-axis current responses of the second
experiment are shown in Fig. 10. Compared with NTSMC, the
chattering of current based on CNTSMC is reduced obviously.

Fig. 10. Steady state d- axis current comparison of CNTSMC and NTSMC.
Fig. 8. Current performance by adding and lightening load based on CNTSMC
with 500 r/min commanded under step load torque.
V. CONCLUSIONS
The second experiment is coincided with the simulation
In this paper, one new CNTSMC has been proposed for the
results, where the speed of PMSM starting from 500 r/min, is
PMSM drive system. The CNTSMC can estimate the
reduced to 450 r/min, and then increased to 550 r/min. Due to
disturbances so that the composite speed controller can have a
limitations of the experimental conditions, the added load
corresponding part to compensate and reduce chattering
initial value is 10 Nm. The dynamic performance based on
simultaneously. NTSMC strategy has been introduced in the
CNTSMC and NTSMC with changing speed commanded is
speed controller design to improve the dynamic response of
shown in Fig. 2. Firstly, the d and q axis current response is
closed loop system. Through disturbance estimation of DOB
shown in Fig. 2 (a), which illustrate the quick response and low
for feed-forward compensation, the switching gain is reduced
ripple of CNTSMC fully. Secondly, the speed response about
without sacrificing disturbance rejection performance.
CNTSMC and NTSMC is shown in Fig. 2 (b). As from this
Experiments verify with simulations and relative theoretical
figure, it is noted that CNTSMC with less than 20 r/min
investigation, which demonstrate excellent parameter
overshoot can track its command very well, while the NTSMC
robustness of the new CNTSMC. The control performance of
suffers a bigger overshoot, 40 r/min, and its response is much
new CNTSMC is excellent while the selection of parameters in
slower. Furthermore, the ripple and chattering of CNTSMC
controllers and observers are a little complex and time
have been reduced efficiently in comparison with those of
consumption. In next step, more simplified methods based on
NTSMC, e.g., the speed ripple of CNTSMC is almost 20% of
the new CNTSMC should be further investigated, which could
that of NTSMC. Thirdly, Fig. 2 (c) shows the ideal a-phase
decrease the implementation time, and meanwhile reduce
current of CNTSMC. The real speed curve of CNTSMC is very
chattering and disturbance rejection simultaneously.
good, and speed error is not more than 1.0 rpm.

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