Summary In this paper, a novel reaching law for discrete‐time variable structure systems is proposed. It ensures that the representative point (state) of the controlled plant approaches the switching plane in finite time and then crosses it in every subsequent step. Moreover, the proposed reaching law ensures that for the nominal plant the absolute value of the sliding variable asymptotically decreases to zero, and for the perturbed plant, it converges to a smaller interval around zero than with the application of previously proposed reaching laws. The control method proposed in this paper guarantees asymptotic stability of the nominal system and uniform ultimate boundedness of the perturbed one. Furthermore, the method ensures that the sliding variable rate of change (i.e. the difference between its values at any two subsequent sampling instants) is bounded by design parameters, which do not depend on the system initial conditions. This is a highly desirable property, as it results in a priori specified, ‘almost’ constant convergence rate of the sliding variable when the system state is far off the switching plane and helps enforce state constraints in the system. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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This paper presents the first attempt to design a reaching law-based discrete-time sliding mode controller with a relative degree 2 switching variable. The current value of this variable is only affected by the control signal and disturbance generated two time instants ago. It is demonstrated that the new reaching law-based strategy offers a smaller quasi-sliding mode band width when compared to a similar control scheme with relative degree 1 switching variable. This in turn leads to reduced system output error in the control system proposed in the paper.