Electrical Power and Machines Dept.
Automatic Control Lab
Faculty of Engineering Third Year (EPE Lab)
Cairo University C2: Position Control Experiment
C2: Position Control
I. Objectives:
1. To get familiar with the main components of closed loop position control system.
2. To understand the main advantages of the closed loop system over the open loop.
3. To reduce the overshoot of a position servo without affecting the precision.
II. Closed Loop Experiment
Connect the feedback loop shown in Figure 1. Make sure that the feedback is negative and not
positive.
Figure 1 Closed loop Configuration of Servo D.C. Motor
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Electrical Power and Machines Dept. Automatic Control Lab
Faculty of Engineering Third Year (EPE Lab)
Cairo University C2: Position Control Experiment
1. Closed Loop Performance Study
Move the control potentiometer and observe that the load takes up various positions based on
the control potentiometer settings.
Q14 :'What is the physical controlled variable in this condition?
Q15 : Is the system stable or not stable ?
Adjust the control potentiometer so that the pointer is 90 degree.
Q16 : Is the system accuracy improved after the feedback ?
Try to move the load clockwise and anti-clockwise by hand.
Q17 : Is there considerable mechanical opposition to this external disturbance in both
directions?
Q18 : Compare between open loop performance and closed loop performance.
2. Proportional Controller
Open MatLab, start new simulink model. Build the system shown in Figure 2,
where,
𝐺(𝑠) is the obtained transfer function from question 6
𝐾 is the amplifier gain
Figure 2 Feedback Controller
Q19 : What are y(t), e(t) and r(t) representing in the real system ?
Let the reference signal be a square wave with 0.2 Hz frequency. Change the gain (K) from 5
to 25 with step of 5. Obtain the output in each case on the matlab simulation and on the real
system
Q20 : Does the simulation result match the real system output ?
Q20 : Which gain results in best performance ?
Q21 : What is the relation between the error steady state and the gain ?
Q21 : What is the relation between the system damping and the gain ?
Q22: Is there a trade off between the best transient response and best steadystate
response ?
Q23 : What is the amplifier gain for no overshot and zero error steady state, if exists?
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Electrical Power and Machines Dept. Automatic Control Lab
Faculty of Engineering Third Year (EPE Lab)
Cairo University C2: Position Control Experiment
3. Derivative Feedback
In order to solve the response trade off mentioned above, Connect the tacho-generator output
as a second feedback; see Figure 3.
Repeat the last step ( test different gain values ) and observe the change in the system
response.
Q21 : What is the effect of the tacho-generator feedback on the system overshoot and
on the error steady state ?
Q22 : What is the equivalent controller type on this schematic ?
Figure 3 Configuration of Servo D.C. Motor with Tachometer in the Feedback
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