Acceleration Feedback Concepts for Dynamic Emulation of Mechanical Loads

The dynamic emulation of mechanical loads is required in a variety of applications to test and validate control algorithms. Typical test setups consist of two mechanically coupled motors, one of which is the Device Under Test (DUT) while the other is used as a load drive for emulation. Existing emulation concepts either rely on the differentiation of velocity feedback or utilize measured quantities of the DUT. The emulation method proposed in this paper uses acceleration feedback to control the torque of the load drive. It does not require any measured quantities of the DUT which allows a simple replacement of the DUT’s motor and/or inverter without the need of any conceptual changes. Based on a physical model, the emulation method is derived analytically and analyzed numerically for the emulation of one-mass-systems. The stability and emulation quality is evaluated considering two controller architectures. Finally, experiments are conducted and compared to numeric simulations to test the correct emulation