Fuzzy control for Electric Power Steering System with assist motor current input constraints

Friction and disturbances of the road are the main sources of nonlinearity in the Electric Power Steering (EPS) System. Consequently, conventional linear controllers design based on a simplified linear model of the EPS system will result in poor dynamic performance or system instability. On the other hand, a brush-type DC motor is more used in EPS control with an input current that is limited in practice. The control laws designed without taking into account the saturation effect may have undesirable consequences on the system stability. In this paper, a Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy is used to represent the nonlinear behavior of an EPS system, and stabilization conditions for nonlinear EPS system with both constrained and saturated control input cases are proposed in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMI). Simulation results show that both the saturated and constrained controls can stabilize the resulting closed-loop EPS system and provide a stable driving in the presence of nonlinear friction, disturbance of the road and actuator saturation.