Switching-Gain Active Disturbance Rejection Control for Air Starting Systems of ATF With Multi-Valve Linkage Strategy

The air starting system (ASS) of the altitude test facility (ATF) has complex nonlinearity and uncertain disturbances, which seriously affects high performance system control and fast response. In order to solve the above problems, this paper proposes a switching-gain active disturbance rejection control (SG-ADRC) framework for the air start system of the ATF for the first time. In particular, a multi-valve linkage strategy is proposed (i.e., simultaneously adjusting the opening of the main and the bypass control valves), which improves the flexibility and rapidity of pressure regulation. Moreover, a switching-gain scheme is designed to further improve the control performance under multiple working conditions. Simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve stable and fast tracking of the target pressure, and the control steady-state error is maintained within 0.0024 (after normalization) and the settling time is about 3 s.