Control of a torsional plant using IO and FO compensators

This work implements two feedback control systems to stabilize the angular position of the shaft of a torsional plant subjected to torsion. The first control system stabilizes such a position using an IO (Integer Order) compensator, while the second employs a FO (Fractional Order) one. The latter compensator uses the structure (the transfer function) of the former. That is, to obtain the FO compensator from the IO compensator, we need to make fractional all s operators of the transfer function representing the IO compensator. Therefore, we require to replace the Laplace operator s by s^α, where α is a fractional number between 0 and 1. Experimental results obtained with the implementation of both feedback control systems demonstrated that the steady-state error, the settling time and the overshoot of the controlled output were reduced (improved) by the FO control system.