Trade-off Adjustment of Fractional Order Low-pass Filter for Vibration Suppression Control of Torsional System

Abstract — This paper proposes a fractional order low-pass filter 1 (Ts+1)α for adjusting the trade-off between stability margin loss and the strength of vibration suppression, in which order α can not only be integer but also be any real number. The necessity of this trade-off adjustment is common and natural in oscillatory system’s control. For such kind of systems, classical PI control with fractional order low-pass filter 1 (Ts+1)α could be a general solution. As a novel approach, by letting the orderα of low-pass filter 1 (Ts+1)α be fractional, control system’s frequency response can be adjusted easily. This superiority of Fractional Order Control (FOC) leads to a clear-cut design that is desired in engineering applications. The trade-off in oscillatory system control can be adjusted directly through FOC approach. In this paper, torsional system’s speed control is used as a case study for an experimental verification of FOC’s theoretical superiority. For implementation of fractional order low-pass filter, broken-line approximation method is applied. Design process and experimental results demonstrate that a “simple & clear-cut design” can be achieved by introducing FOC concept.