A Disturbance Attenuation Approach for a Class of Continuous Piecewise Affine Systems: Control Design and Experiments

We consider the disturbance attenuation problem for a class of continuous piecewise affine systems. Hereto, observer-based output-feedback controllers are proposed that render the closed-loop system uniformly convergent. The convergence property ensures, first, stability and, second, the existence of a unique, bounded, globally asymptotically stable steady-state solution for each bounded disturbance. The latter property is key in uniquely specifying closed-loop performance in terms of disturbance attenuation. Because of its importance in engineering practice, the class of harmonic disturbances is studied in particular and performance measures for this class of disturbances are proposed based on so-called generalized frequency response functions for convergent systems. Additionally, the derived control strategy is extended by including conditions that guarantee the satisfaction of a bound on the control input. The effectiveness of the proposed control design strategy is illustrated by the application of the results to an experimental benchmark system being a piecewise affine beam system.