PS600 Loading Bridge

The laboratory experimental setup “Loading Bridge” contains the technical realization of a practical plant together with an actuator and a digital controller. The digital controller realizes an observer based state feedback controller. The laboratory setup is based on the plant “Position Control PC60”.

The basic system includes an actuator as well as the mechanical setup (PC60) with a premounted loading bridge extension kit (Option 60-30). The extension kit is represented by a gear motor with a winch combined with an incremental encoder to detect the rope length and another incremental encoder to measure the rope angle. Only one lead with a multi-polar terminal provides the electrical connections. The loading bridge mechanics is mounted on top of the cart of the position control plant by means of 4 knurled screws. By a three-phase synchronous drive, a toothed wheel, a toothed belt and a clutch, the cart can be driven along a guiding bar over a length of approximately 1.5m. The documentation includes sections for assembly and start-up, the technical data, the program operation as well as the theoretical background with the mathematical model of the plant.

The standard digital control of the basic system consists of the PC adapter card MF634 Option 60-03 and an executable controller program (MS-Windows) Option 60-32. The adapter card as well as the program require a PC with PCIe slot.

The controller program (WINDOWS 7-10) allows for a menu-driven operation of the laboratory experiment. The control algorithm realizes a state feedback with estimation of the angular speed of the rope and the speed of the cart as well as a disturbance observer to compensate the effects of the friction. The friction compensation force acts on the bearing of the cart. All of the controller and observer parameters are conveniently adjustable. The controller performance is examined by recording the measurements and observed signals of the system.

The graphic output of recorded data may be sent to a window. Its content may be printed, saved as a WMF file or copied into the clipboard.

Additional options are available to extend the standard version of the laboratory experiment such that the system "Loading Bridge" is useable as a real process applicable for research studies in the field of complex control algorithms or fault detection methods. For this purpose the "C++" sources of the software are offered in addition.

By means of the PC plug-in card MF634 of Humusoft the laboratory experiment "PC60 Loading Bridge" can easily be integrated in Matlab/Simulink with real-time environment. The user now has the opportunity to test its own controller designs under Matlab/Simulink.

The Option 60-35 contains the C++ source files of the PC controller program including library functions for graphic output, controlling the sampling period as well as controlling the PC adapter card. With this option the user is able to implement special algorithms for control, supervision or fault detection in the frame of the menu-driven program. The Embarcadero C++ Builder V10 is required to generate an executable program

Technical data are subject to change (Date 4-December-2017)