Sliding-mode control of electro-hydraulic positioning tracking system combining K-observer and nonlinear disturbance observer

High-precision position control of hydraulic systems is of great significance in industrial applications. However, unknown external force disturbance, measurement noise, and other uncertain nonlinearities widely exist in electro-hydraulic servo systems, which severely degrade the system performance. To handle this problem, a sliding-mode controller based on K-observer with nonlinear disturbance observer is proposed for electro-hydraulic position systems in this article. The nonlinear disturbance observer is to estimate and eliminate the time-varying external force disturbance. The sliding-mode controller based on K-observer is to reach low gain observation of states and improve the system performance by reducing the chattering of the sliding-mode algorithm. The proposed controller is proved to be stable by the Lyapunov stability criterion. Comparative experiments support that the controller has high precision and strong robustness.