Design of an Advanced Distributed Adaptive Control for Multi-SMA Actuators

Abstract

Aerospace applications place high demands on designing Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuators, including accuracy, dependability, high-performance criteria, and cooperative activation. Because of their portability, durability, and performance under extreme conditions, SMAs have found a home in the aerospace industry as single and array actuators. This paper presents the development of a control scheme for thermally activating rotary SMA actuators as single and cooperative actuators. The control scheme is a hybrid adaptive robust control abbreviated as HARC. The immersion and invariance adaptive (I&I adaptive) and L2-gain control frameworks are utilized in developing the HARC approach. To create stable transient responses despite parametric and nonparametric errors, recursive backstepping is utilized for asymptotic stability. At the same time, L2-gain control is applied to ensure the global stability of the transient closed-loop system. Both techniques are used in conjunction with one another. In contrast to the conventional I&I, the robust control law can be developed without needing a target system or the solution of PDEs to satisfy the I&I condition. The parametric uncertainty is estimated with the help of an adaptive rule, and the nonparametric uncertainty brought on by the phase change of the SMA material and modeling mistakes is accounted for with the help of asymptotic nonlinear functions. The designed HARC is then extended to cover the actuation of multi-SMA or array actuators to respond to the increasing demand for cooperative controllers using distributed control protocols. It has been demonstrated through simulation testing on a rotational NiTi SMA actuator that the suggested control approach is both practical and resilient.