Alexandria Engineering Journal (2018) xxx, xxx–xxx

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Alexandria University

Alexandria Engineering Journal

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

A fractional order PID control strategy in active

magnetic bearing systems
Ahmed Mohamed Abdel-Hafez Shata a,*, Ragi A. Hamdy b,
Ayman Samy Abdelkhalik b, Ibrahim El-Arabawy b

a
Mechatronics Department, Alexandria Higher Institute of Engineering and Technology, Alexandria, Egypt
b
Electrical Department, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt

Received 18 August 2017; revised 5 December 2017; accepted 13 January 2018

KEYWORDS Abstract Active Magnetic Bearings (AMBs) are broadly utilized for high angular speed machines
Active magnetic bearings; such as turbo-machinery, compressors and high speed motors. In AMBs, the rotating parts run
PID; without physical contacts with the moving parts. This reduces maintenance costs and minimizes
Fractional PID; friction. Generally, the applied loads cause extra gyroscopic effects on the rotating parts especially
Gyroscopic effects; under high-speed operation. Although conventional PID controllers are widely employed in these
Particle swarm optimization systems, they experience some stability problems under high dynamic operations. In this paper,
the design of an active magnetic bearing system based on fractional order PID (FOPID) controllers
to enhance system dynamics and stability is introduced. The suggested controller gains are opti-
mized utilizing particle swarm optimization (PSO) approach. An ordinary AMB system framework
with four radial bearings is used to assess the suggested FOPID controller against routine PID con-
trollers. The system current limitation, overshoot constraint, and time specifications requirements
are deemed in the optimization technique.
Ó 2018 Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an
open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction tion, discarding the need of lubricants, and working at high

rotational speed and high temperature ranges. Moreover,
Active magnetic bearings are regularly utilized for industrial using AMBs allows the variation on the value of bearing
implementations that claim high angular speed rotating shafts. damping and improved the suspension system dynamic beha-
The contactless characteristic of AMBs allows the rotating and viour [1,2]. Recently, AMBs have gathered attentions at many
stationary parts to work with no physical contact. The main industrial technologies such as high speed turbo machineries,
advantages of using AMBs are reducing the mechanical fric- high speed compressors and bearingless motors and genera-
tors. Active control on surge in centrifugal compressors is a
* Corresponding author. crucial case; AMBs have been widely used in such application
E-mail addresses: ahmed.shata@aiet.edu.eg (Ahmed Mohamed Ab- that needs high dynamic performance [3]. The bearingless
del-Hafez Shata), rhamdy@alexu.edu.eg (R.A. Hamdy), Ayman. motors are also shown promise as an effective means to pro-
abdel-khalik@alexu.edu.eg (A.S. Abdelkhalik). duce both torque and magnetic levitation with a single stator
Peer review under responsibility of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria frame [4].
University.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2018.01.020
1110-0168 Ó 2018 Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Please cite this article in press as: A.-M.A.H. Shata et al., A fractional order PID control strategy in active magnetic bearing systems, Alexandria Eng. J. (2018),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2018.01.020
2 Ahmed Mohamed Abdel-Hafez Shata et al.
Under open loop operation, AMBs systems are inherently
unstable [3] while exhibit some dynamic problems at high
speed rotations. In addition, the dynamic performance of an
AMB is highly affected by gyroscopic effects especially at high
rotational speeds.
Thanks to their simplicity, conventional PID controllers are
usually employed in most of industrial AMBs systems. In [1], a
conventional PID controller is used by the aid of multiobjec-
tive genetic algorithm (MOGA) to get an improved system
performance. Generally, it is difficult to control the complex
structure of an AMB with the only three parameters of PID.
Therefore, the technique in [1] used more complex PID struc-
ture, namely, PID with notch, lag-lead, and low pass filter. The
optimization strategy of the approach developed was to intro-
duce the sensitivity-based parameter reduction in combination
with the hierarchical evaluation procedure of fitness functions
using MOGA. In [2], an optimization strategy was carried out
for controlling flexible rotor magnetic bearing system. Another
control on magnetically levitated micro permanent magnet
(PM) motors by two types of active magnetic bearings was
introduced in [5], where PD controller was implemented for
such micro PM system. The relation between speeds and con-
trol current were also investigated. The conventional PID con-
troller had shown acceptable experimental results in [6] on a
simple construction of AMB. In [7], a co-simulation using
MATLAB and ADAMS were performed for high speed flexi-
ble rotor that used AMBs. The controller and actuator are
modeled in MATLAB while the plant model is modeled using
the ADAMS software. The simulation results in [7] showed
that for the designed control parameters, the flexible rotor
can rotate at its rated speed without much run outs. In [8] a
teaching learning based optimization (TLBO) was used to
optimize the parameters of a PID controller on a magnetically
levitated system.
In spite of traditional PID controllers can give good
dynamic performance in typical AMB systems as utilized in
the literature, they encounters some stability issues due to
the inherent system instability under variable speed operation.
Therefore, much work was executed out in the available liter-
ature using various types of controllers to ameliorate the
dynamic execution of AMBs. Although voltage control
method is better than current control method in AMB systems
[9,10], it always suffers from the mismatched disturbances act-
ing on the system. A controller dependent upon disturbance
observer was introduced in [11] for precision suspension of
voltage controlled AMB system. A Linear Quadratic Gaussian
(LQG) controller, consisting of an extended kalman filter and
an optimal state feedback regulator, is implemented in [12].
This helps to achieve better system dynamics and higher bear-
ing stiffness with least energy effort compared to PID [13,14].
Fractional order PID (FOPID) is the basal structure of the
classical PID. FOPID is a 5DOF controller because the inte-
grator and differentiator orders can also be tuned. This advan-
tage increases the system flexibility, improves the dynamic
performance, and makes the control system less sensitive to
external disturbances. Some references in the literature com-
pared between PID and FOPID performances [15,16]. The
comparative study between PID and FOPID has proved that
FOPID is more robust and flexible. FOPID has gathered a
great attention in applications that are inherently introduced
as fractional order and for applications that need higher
dynamic performances. The work in [17] has introduced the
Please cite this article in press as: A.-M.A.H. Shata et al., A fractional order PID control strategy in active magnetic bearing systems, Alexandria Eng. J. (2018),
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generalized concept of mutual inductance in the fractional
order domain. This study highlights the importance of using
Fractional order controllers for fractional order applications.
In this regard [18], the fractional order model of the DC motor
was proposed and a combination between PID and FOPID
were implemented to control the system. Recently, FOPID
was employed to control magnetically levitated systems. In
[19], the design of FO controller was done for a simple con-
struction of magnetically levitation system. The work had sim-
plified the way of tuning parameters as it had been chosen by
the overshoot requirements rather than using complex fre-
quency domain characteristics or artificial intelligence. Finally,
this work had compared between PID and FO performances
as usual in similar studies. The work in [25] had shown benefit
of utilizing FOPID controllers to increase robustness of the
controller applied on a motor generator system. While in [26]
the author had shown that actice disturbance on complex non-
linear two way drive system can bereduced using FOPI.
Recently, the intelligent optimization techniques have been
useful for tuning PID and FOPID parameters. The Particle
Swarm Optimization (PSO) does not entail mutation or cross-
over operation. Therefore, it is preferred over other techniques
like genetic algorithms [21]. One of PSO advantages is that it
has a memory, where all best achieved solutions are memo-
rized; therefore, the next iterations search for the global solu-
tion. Generally, PSO can create higher quality solutions with
the least computation time, which can also be controlled by
choosing less number of iterations [22].
In this paper, an optimal design for PID and FOPID con-
trollers employed to an AMB with four DOF has been intro-
duced. The tuning of the gain parameters for both
controllers was done using PSO. The control strategy aims
to minimize the integration of error signal (IAE) to achieve
the best response. Considering the current and saturation lim-
itations for both controllers was crucial in this work. The study
aims at studying the effect of shaft speed variation under high-
speed operation while the gyroscopic effects are also
investigated.
2. Structure of four DOF AMBs
In a 4DOF AMB system the rotating shaft is suspended by
radial magnetic bearings at both ends. As shown in Fig. 1,
the shaft is radially suspended at A and B by differential
AMBs.
Fig. 1 is explained as follow [1,2,9]

d mA , d mB are the distances between the shaft center of gravity
COG and the magnetic bearings at the shaft ends A and B
respectively.

d sA , d sB are the distances between the shaft center of gravity
COG and the proximity sensors at the shaft ends A and B
respectively.

a and b are the inclination angles of the shaft around x and
y axis respectively, x is the angular speed of the shaft along
z axis.

x is the angular speed of the shaft along z axis.

AMBxA AMBxB ,AMByA and AMByB are the active magnetic
bearings in two axis x and y, P :S A and P :S B are proximity
sensors

f Ax ; f Bx ; f Ay andf By are forces created by
AMBxA AMBxB ,AMByA and AMByB respectively.
A fractional order PID control strategy 3

Fig. 1 Four DOF AMB system.

The terms in (2) cannot be neglected under high-speed oper-

2.1. Shaft dynamics and gyroscopic effect ation. Therefore, the AMB system torque equations should
include the computation of the gyroscopic effect to produce
a torque that compensates for these effects. Hence, the equa-
The rotating shaft is a rigid rotating body in a three dimen-
tion of motion would be as follow:
sional space x, y and z: The dynamics behavior of the rotating
body is an important issue as it explains terms like natural € þ Iz xa_ ¼ Tx
Iy b
vibrations and gyromechanics [28]. As shown in Fig. 2, the ð2Þ
shaft rotates in a three dimensional space, therefore, three a þ Iz xb_ ¼ Ty
Ix €
moments of inertia Ix ; Iy and Iz are to be calculated in the
where Iy b€ and Ix €a are the moments produced towards outer
direction of the three axisx, y and z.
The shaft is a body that is symmetrical with respect to the z- loads Tex and Tey .
axis, which is called the spin axis. As the shaft rotates with an Iz xa_ and Iz xb_ are the gyroscopic effects, Tx and Ty are the
angular velocity x, an angular momentum tends to be in the torque generated by the AMB.
direction of the spin axis with a moment of inertia Iz : The angu- Hence, (2) can be reduced to:
lar momentum is initially of a value L0 as shown in Fig. 2 and its € þ Iz xa_ ¼ dmA f þ dmB f
Iy b Ax Bx
value equals the rotational angular speed multiplied by the ð3Þ
moment of inertia, L0 ¼ Iz x [28]. Due to the shaft weight or a þ Iz xb_ ¼ dmA f þ dmB f
Ix € Ay By
any other external force downwards, the shaft will be displaced The general equation of motion will be given by [1,2]:
downwards if it is not rotating. However, for rotating bodies,
the gyroscopic effect appears as shown in Fig. 2. Although the MR€ þ GR_ ¼ BF ð4Þ
effect of the weight is downwards, the shaft do not displaced where M ¼ diagonalðIy ; m; Ix ; mÞ is the mass matrix, m is the
downward but it tends to rotate and tilt around the y axis. In
rotor mass, and Ix and Iy are the rotor moment of inertia in
other words, the angular momentum changed its direction from
both x and y directions respectively.
L0 to Lgyro [9,28]. This induced torque or moment applied due to
The matrix R¼ ða; Xse ; b; Yse ÞT , where Xse ; Yse are the dis-
gyroscope is represented as follow [9,10]:
placements of the shaft from the COG.
Tgyro x ¼ Iz xa_ The Gyroscopic matrix is defined by (5). As shown it
ð1Þ
Tgyro y ¼ Iz xb_ depends directly on rotational speed which will cause change
in closed loop poles at each speed variation.




0 0 Iz x 0





0 0 0 0




G¼

ð5Þ

Iz x 0 0 0





0 0 0 0

where Iz is the rotor moment of inertia in the z direction.

The matrix B defined by (6).




dmA dmB 0 0





1 0



1 0
B¼

ð6Þ

0 0 dmA dmB





0 0 1 1

The equation of motion of 4DOF AMB system can be

Fig. 2 Dynamics of a Rigid/Rotating Shaft. rewritten as follow by substituting from (4) [2,19]:

Please cite this article in press as: A.-M.A.H. Shata et al., A fractional order PID control strategy in active magnetic bearing systems, Alexandria Eng. J. (2018),
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4 Ahmed Mohamed Abdel-Hafez Shata et al.

MR€ þ GR_ ¼ BKs BT R þ Ki ð7Þ shown in (8). To solve this mathematical challenge, the system
states can be easily divided into multiplied integrators, as
shown in Fig. 3. Each state is divided to ten states; this makes
3. Fractional order PIn Dk controller the base order of the system to be s0:1 1
. This way, the gain
n and k can have any value but with one decimal point.
The fractional order PIn Dk is a generalized form for the con- Increasing the number of decimal points requires increasing
ventional PID controller. The transfer function of the con- the system order. For simplicity, the work presented here will
troller is represented as follow [20,21]: be limited to gain values with a one decimal point. Conse-
Ti quently, the state equations are rewritten as follow [19]:
Gfopid ðsÞ ¼ Tp þ þ Td sk ð8Þ
Sn s0:1 x1 ¼ x2
where Tp ; Ti and Td are the controller gains, whilen and k s0:1 x2 ¼ x3
...
are the integrator and differentiator orders respectively.
The integrator and differentiator orders in (8) could be any
real number, integer, non-integer or even a complex number. s0:1 x19 ¼ x20
ð9Þ
The fractional order PID is a five degree of freedom controller. s x20 ¼ M BKs BT x1  M1 Gx10 þ M1 BKi x21
0:1 1

It increases the flexibility of the system by expanding the ..

choice of the gain parameter from point control to plane as .
discussed in [20,22,24]. s0:1 xð20þ0:1n 1Þ ¼ xð20þ0:1n Þ
s0:1 xð20þ0:1n Þ ¼ CTi x1  CTp sn x1  CTd snþk x1
4. Controller design
The number of state vectors will be variable and depends on
n
In this paper, an optimum design for two controllers on a the value of n. The state vector dimension will be (20 þ 0:1 ),
4DOF AMB system has been made. The first one utilizes clas- where the main system states will be 20 states before using
sical PID controller, while the other employs a FO PIn Dk con- any controller. The value of n determines the number of system
troller [27]. In classical PID controller, only three parameters states. While, the value of k does not affect the system dimen-
are to be tuned, namely, Tp; Ti and Td; . On the other hand, sion. However, as shown in (9) and (10), the value of k deter-
mines the position of the terms CTp and CTd the process
the complete tuning of a PIn Dk controller entails selecting five
matrix and, hence, changes the system poles. Therefore, the
parameters, namely Tp; Ti ; Td ; n and k. In this work, the opti-
process matrix A can be reconstructed using the following
mum design is executed using the particle swarm optimization
steps:
technique (PSO) for both cases. The selection of the parame-
ters is based on diminishing the performance index, which rep-
(1) Getting the process matrixA
resents the integration of the absolute error (IAE). The design
of either controller takes into consideration the system electri-
cal and mechanical constraints including the coil maximum



current and maximum allowable overshoot.
0 I   0





0 0 I  0





. . . . .

4.1. Control strategy using FOPID
.. .. .. .. ..









½Að20þ n Þð20þ n Þ ¼
M BKs B    0    M G    0    M BKi


1 T 1 1

The controller block diagram using FOPID is similar to con- 0:1 0:1

.. .. .. .. ..


. . . . .

ventional PID except that the mathematical calculations are





more complex than PID. Fig. 3 shows the closed loop block
0 0    I 0





CTi CTp 0 CTd 0

diagram for the 4DOF AMB system using FOPID.
The main difference between PID and FOPID is that the ð10Þ
integral and differential orders n and k respectively are adap-
where CTp and CTd position in the matrix of Eq. (21) is
tive in FOPID, which could be any non-integer number, as
determined by the value of k.

Fig. 3 Closed loop block diagram of control on 4DOF AMB system using FOPID.

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A fractional order PID control strategy 5

(2) Compute the state transition matrix as follow in Eq. (11) Assume that s0:1 equals k and substitute in (17), hence;

0:1


s I  A
1 ¼ jkI  Aj1 ð1;1Þ
ð1;1Þ
1 1
/ðtÞ ¼ L js I  Aj n
ð11Þ
b11 k12 þ b12 k11 þ a13 k10 þ a14 k9 þ    þ b110
¼
a11 k22 þ a12 k21 þ a13 k20 þ a14 k19 þ    þ a121 k þ a122
ð18Þ
(3) Get the integration of absolute error IAE as in (12)
Eq. (18) can now be divided using partial fraction decom-
position as follow:
Z ts
IAE ¼ jeðtÞjdt ð12Þ jkI  Aj1 ð1;1Þ ¼ ky
x1
1
þ ky
x2
2
þ ky
x3
3
þ ky
x4
4
þ             þ ky
x22
22
0
¼ s0:1xy
1
þ s0:1xy
2
þ s0:1xy
3
þ s0:1xy
4
þ             þ s0:1xy
22

where 1 2 3 4 22

ð19Þ
eðtÞ ¼ C  /ðtÞ  Rð0Þ ð13Þ
To get the inverse Laplace of (19), each fraction must be
and Rð0Þ ¼ ðXse0 ; a0 ; Yse0 ; b0 ÞT is the initial shaft position vector. inversed separately as follow:
The system is constrained by two important limitations as x1 x1 1
follow: ¼ 
s0:1  y1 s0:1 ð1  sy0:11 Þ
(1) The control current should not exceed its maximum x1 y1 y1 2 y1 3
¼ 0:1  ð1 þ 0:1 þ ð 0:1 Þ þ ð 0:1 Þ þ   Þ ð20Þ
limit to avoid core saturation, which affects the system s s s s
stability. The maximum current is calculated as follows: Eq. (20) can now be inversed easily using the inverse
Laplace laws as follow:
Imax ¼ ðNumax Þ=L ð14Þ  
x1 t0:1 y y 2 t0:1
L1 0:1 ¼ x1  ð pffiffiffi þ 1 þ 1 pffiffiffi þ   Þ ð21Þ
s  y1 p 1 0:1 p
umax ¼ Bsat Ag ð15Þ
The series in (21) is infinite; therefore it is solved using a
(2) Maximum overshoot is very important to be below the fractional calculus method called Mittag-Leffler which is
air gap clearance to avoid the shaft impact with the defined as follow:
bearings. X
1
ðfnÞl
E a;b ðfnÞ ¼ ð22Þ
l¼0
Cðal þ bÞ

4.2. Finding the state transition matrix Therefore, by using the Mittag Leffler series to solve (21),
the solution will have the following form:
In this subsection the mathematical approach for finding the X
1 l
ðy1 t0:1 Þ
state transition matrix is presented. The following example E 0:1;1 ðy1 t0:1 Þ ¼ ð23Þ
Cð0:1l þ 1Þ
explains how to get the state transition for a FOPID controller l¼0

with n ¼ 0:2 and k ¼ 1:2:

The state equations are as follow: 5. Simulation results
s0:1 x1 ¼ x2
s0:1 x2 ¼ x3 In this section, a simulation study is carried out to investigate
.. the effect of a sudden speed change, which increases the gyro-
. scopic effects, on 4DOF AMBs. The simulation is done using
s0:1 x19 ¼ x20 ð16Þ
1 1 1
s x20 ¼ M BKs B x1  M Gx10 þ M BKi x21
0:1 T

s0:1 x21 ¼ x22 Table 1 AMB Parameters.

s x22 ¼ CTi x1  CTp x3  CTd x13
0:1
AMB System Parameters Value Unit
Therefore, the total numbers of state vectors are 22. Conse- Mass of shaft 25 Kg
quently, the process matrix A is constructed as in (10). Inertia of the rotor in x, and y axis Ix ; Iy 0:785 Kgm2
The state transition matrix given by (11) is the inverse Inertia of rotor in z axis Iz 0:03635 Kgm2
Laplace of the following matrix jsn I  Aj1 which is a square Position of Bearings dmA , dmB 0:1707 m
Sensor positions dsA , dsB 0:2007 m
matrix with a dimension of 22  22. Each element in this
Number of turns (N) 1000 Turns
matrix is a function in the controller parameters and the rotat- Air gab Lg 10 mm
ing speed as proved in the last section. The first element in this Area of air gap Ag 330 mm2
matrix is described as follow: Inductance of coil 0:125 H

0:1
b11 s1:2 þ b12 s1:1 þ a13 s1 þ a14 s0:9 þ    þ b110 BKnee ; Bsat 1:2; 1:6 Tesla

s I  A
1 ¼
ð1;1Þ a11 s2:2 þ a12 s2:1 þ a13 s2 þ a14 s1:9 þ    þ a121 s0:1 þ a122 Ki 675 N=A
ð17Þ
Ks 2:3  106 N=m

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6 Ahmed Mohamed Abdel-Hafez Shata et al.

Response of displacement angle using PID

Table 2 Initial Shaft Position. 0.15
Shaft initial conditions Value Unit
a 0:1 rad 0.1
b 0 rad
Xse 0 m

Angle (rad)
Yse 0 m 0.05

0
both PID and FOPID controllers based on the design criterion
describes in Sections 4 and 5 respectively. Three parameters
-0.05
were optimized in PID which are Tp ; Ti and Td . The same
as PID, Tp ; Ti and Td were optimized in the case of FOPID,
however a trial and error method were used to select -0.1
n and k. The PSO was carried out with 10 swarm size and 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Time (sec)
10 iterations. The mathematical approaches needed for control
was applied to the algorithm to evaluate the objective function. Fig. 4 Angle of inclination response using PID Controller.
The global best solution given by PSO is conditionally
restricted by the current limitations given by (20). The AMB
system parameters are given in Table 1 and the initial shaft Response of deviation angle at n=0.1
position is assumed as appears in Table 2. 0.1

5.1. The effect of controllers on system poles and overall system 0.08
stability
0.06
The first comparison between PID and FOPID is a general
(rad)

time specification comparison. According to the optimized val- 0.04

ues in Table 3, a simulation case study was carried out for a
rotational speed of 100 rad=sec for the conventional PID case
0.02
and for a FOPID withn ¼ 0:1 and k ¼ 1:1 assuming the initial
position given by Table 2, where the shaft is assumed displaced
by an angle of inclination a equals 0:1 rad: The AMB con- 0
troller forces the rotor shaft to position such that the steady-
state error is zero in both axes. The simulation results for -0.02
the response of the angle of inclination a are shown in Figs. 4 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1
Time (sec)
and 5 for the two cases respectively. It is clear that the response
using PID is an underdapmed response with high oscillations Fig. 5 Angle of inclination response using FOPID Controller at
and about 98% maximum overshoot. The response was quietly n ¼ 0:1 and k ¼ 1:1.
sluggish, where the settling time in that case was about 1 sec
which is considered very slow in a typical AMB system.
Fig. 6 shows the closed loop poles when conventional PID Generally, this response cannot be practically accepted as
controller is employed. From Fig. 5, the system dominant any other disturbances may lead to a complete system instabil-
poles where located near to the imaginary axis with a value ity. On the other hand, the response using FOPID was much
of ð0:8  290iÞ, which causes this high oscillatory response. improved. As shown in Fig. 5, the response nearly tends to

Table 3 Optimized Controller Parameters.

Tp (A/V) Ti Td n k
5
FOPID Gains 2  10 10  10 6
9  10 3 0:1 1:1
500 5  107 40 0:2 1:3
1  103 9  109 3  103 0:3 1:3
0:9 3  109 100 0:4 1:1
7  101 6  109 4  104 0:5 1:4
10  105 5  108 1 0:6 1:2
1  103 9  109 3  103 0:7 1:7
2  105 10  106 9  103 0:9 1:6

PID Gains 10  103 7  107 1  103 1 1

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A fractional order PID control strategy 7

Closed Loop Poles At ω =100 rad/s Current using PID controller

300 30

200 20
Imaginary Axis

100
10
Conjugate

Current (A)
Poles
Dominant
0 Poles
0

-100
-10

-200
-20

-300
-5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0
Real Axis -30
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Time (sec)
Fig. 6 Closed Loop poles locations of AMB system using PID.
Fig. 8 The Current variations at using PID controller.

Poles Location on s-plane at n=0.1

4 Control current at n=0.1
0.05

3
0

2
-0.05

1
Current (A)
Imag Axis

-0.1
0 π /20 Unstable
region
-0.15
-1

-0.2
-2

-0.25
-3

-4 -0.3
-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1
Real Axis Time (sec)

Fig. 7 Closed Loop Poles Location at using FOPID at. Fig. 9 Control Current variations with time using FOPID.
n ¼ 0:1 and k ¼ 1:1.

According to system parameters, the maximum current is

be a critically damped response with a small overshoot of 2%.
Moreover time response was quiet acceptable about 0.005sec
rise time and 0.02 sec settling time with a zero steady state
error. This case study justifies the advantages of using the
FOPID method shown in Fig. 3. Dividing the states into a
multiple derivatives with a non integer orders has increased
the complexity but had produced a closed loop poles with bet-
ter dominant poles locations, as shown in Fig. 7, where the
dominant poles was about ð1:5  0:5iÞ. One of the most impor-
tant avail of using FOPID controller is the augmentation of
the stability region area. According to the Riemann sheet
[23], the fractional order systems region of stability is bounded
inside the area of angle np 2
which equals 0.1 in our case, as
shown in Fig. 7.
calculated from (14) to be 1.5A. Fig. 8 illustrates the variation
of current when using a conventional PID while the current is
allowed to exceed its limit value. It shows that for an interval
of 0.6 sec, the current exceeds the limit value. This means that
if the current limit is to be respected, the settling time would be
longer and the system may incorporate some instability. On
the other hand, Fig. 9 shows the variation of current with time
when using the FOPID controller, which is under the current
limitation constraint.
5.2. Effect of integrator and differentiator orders of the FOPID
controller
In this subsection, the effect of the integrator and differentia-
tor orders on the system performance is addressed. The simu-

Please cite this article in press as: A.-M.A.H. Shata et al., A fractional order PID control strategy in active magnetic bearing systems, Alexandria Eng. J. (2018),
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8 Ahmed Mohamed Abdel-Hafez Shata et al.

Response of α using FOPID 5.3. Investigating the speed variation effects on FOPID and PID
0.12
n=0.1, k=1.1 controllers
n=0.2, k=1.3
0.1 n=0.3, k=1.3
n=0.4,k=1.1 In this subsection, the effect of a sudden speed variation has
0.08 n=0.5,k=1.7
been studied for both controller PID and FOPID. Increasing
the rotational speed affects the system behavior as depicted
Angle (rad)

0.06
by (6) which consequently affects the dominant poles location
0.04 of the system. At very high rotational speeds the gyroscopic
effect increases as introduced before. The simulation is carried
0.02 out using n ¼ 0:1 and k ¼ 1:1. Fig. 11 shows the effect of
0
increasing the speed up to 7000 rad=s when using PID.
Fig. 12 illustrates the positions of the dominant poles at vari-
-0.02 ous speeds, it is clear that as the speed increases the dominant
poles becomes closer to the imaginary axis which affects the
-0.04 stability of the system. As shown in Fig. 12 the range of critical
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025
Time (sec) speed could be estimated from the graph as it is about
5500 rad=sec and the system exhibits instability at higher
Fig. 10 Response using FOPID with various integral and
differential orders.
Poles Location on s-plane using n=0.1
4
Displacement angle α using PID at ω =7000 rad/sec
0.15
3

0.1 2 Dominant
Poles
Imaginary Axis

1
Angle (rad)

0.05
0 Unstable
π /20
region
0
-1

-0.05 -2

-3
-0.1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Time (sec) -4
-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4
Real axis
Fig. 11 Response using PID Controller under high speed.
Fig. 13 Poles location at using FOPID under high speed
60,000 rpm.
Closed Loop Poles at Different Speeds
500
ω =50 rad/sec
400 ω =50 rad/sec
ω =100 rad/sec
Response of deviation angle α at n=0.1
ω =100 rad/sec
0.12
300
ω =500 rad/sec ω=100rad/sec
ω =500 rad/sec
Imaginary Axis

200 0.1
ω =1000 rad/sec ω=7000rad/sec
ω =1000 rad/sec
100
ω =5000 rad/sec 0.08 ω=10000rad/sec
ω =5000 rad/sec
0
ω =5600 rad/sec
ω =5600 rad/sec 0.06
-100 ω =7000 rad/sec
α (rad)

ω =7000 rad/sec
-200 ω =100 rad/sec 0.04
-300
0.02
-400

-500 0
-1 -0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Real Axis
-0.02

Fig. 12 Closed Loop poles at different speeds.

-0.04
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1
lation results for the inclination angle are illustrated in Fig. 10. Time (sec)
The best performance was achieved by using
n ¼ 0:4 and k ¼ 1:1. Fig. 14 Effect of speed variations on the response using FOPID.

Please cite this article in press as: A.-M.A.H. Shata et al., A fractional order PID control strategy in active magnetic bearing systems, Alexandria Eng. J. (2018),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2018.01.020
A fractional order PID control strategy
velocities. However, the FOPID poles location was nearly the
same as shown in Fig. 13 which gave actually the same
response at the high speed 7000 rad=s, that is because FO
systems has divided the closed loop states which leads to
decreasing the effect of high speeds on system stability.
Fig. 14 illustrates the response using n ¼ 0:1 and k ¼ 1:1
and various speeds at x ¼ 100; 7000 and 10; 000 rad=sec:
6. Conclusion
This paper introduces a comparative study between PID and
FOPID controllers on 4DOF AMB systems with 4 radial bear-
ings at both shaft ends. The FOPID controller is the general-
ized mathematical form of a conventional PID where the
differentiator and integrator orders, k and n respectively, are
also controllable. In the FOPID controller, k and n where cho-
sen randomly and the gain parameters Tp ; Ti and Td where
optimized using the PSO algorithm. Using PID only, three
parameters are optimized using the same optimization method.
The fitness function considered in this work is the integration
of error signal IAE. The results have shown that although PID
can be employed as a valid controller, it experiences some sta-
bility problems under high speed conditions. On the other
hand FOPID performance was much improved in terms of a
low overshoot and low rise and settling times. The research
demonstrated that the FOPID controller can effectively relo-
cate the system dominant poles in better positions such that
system stability is guaranteed under a higher speed range when
compared with a conventional PID controller. At about
7000 rad=sec for the considered case study, the gyroscopic
effects increases on the rotating shaft. Using PID leads to com-
plete system instability. However using FOPID; the response
under high speeds is much improved. It has been shown that
FOPID can successfully diminish the effect of gyroscopic
effects. Moreover it boosts the system flexibility and
robustness.
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