Synchronous control of tri-motor vibration system considering an adaptive back-stepping control strategy

In oil and gas drilling engineering, the anti-phase synchronization of two co-rotating rotors in a tri-motor vibration system is easy to implement owing to its inherent coupling characteristics, which can lead to the exciting force generated by the vibrating system being very small. Thus, an adaptive back-stepping control strategy is proposed to apply in a tri-motor vibrating system and improve the processing capacity of drilling fluid shaker screens. The algorithm developed in this paper is that a complex higher-order nonlinear system is simplified into lower-order subsystems by the adaptive back-stepping control theory, and then the adaptive law for varying load torque is derived by combining with the adaptive theory to regulate the velocity of motors in a closed loop. Firstly, a dynamical model to describe the tri-motor vibration system is established, and the dynamical equations of the vibrating system are derived based on the Lagrange equation. Then, the speed error controller and the phase difference error controller are designed by combining the adaptive back-stepping control algorithm with the master–slave control (MSC) structure. According to Barbalat’s lemma, the stability of the control system is analyzed to verify the feasibility of the control method. Finally, the dynamical equations of the vibrating system are used to establish an electromechanical coupling control model of a tri-motor driven planar system through the Runge–Kutta method, and it verified the reliability of the control strategy, the robustness, and the stability of the control system, respectively, and intuitively revealed the synchronization characteristics of tri-motor vibration control system. The results demonstrate the phase difference among the three motors can be accurately stabilized at zero by a phase synchronization control strategy based on the adaptive back-stepping control method, and the method is simple and fast-speed and the control system has better robustness.