AMT Starting Control as a Soft Starter for Belt Conveyors Using a Data-Driven Method

Automated mechanical transmission (AMT) is used as a soft starter in this paper. To improve the soft starting quality, a novel data-driven method is studied. By analyzing and comparing five common soft-starting acceleration curves, a segmented acceleration curve is put forward to be used as the soft-starting acceleration curve for the AMT. Based on the prototype model free adaptive control (MFAC) method, a modified MFAC method with jerk compensation is given to control the AMT output shaft’s angular acceleration and reduce driveline shock. Compared with the methods of prototype MFAC and traditional proportion integration differentiation (PID), the modified MFAC method with jerk compensation can better control the AMT output shaft’s angular acceleration and has excellent characteristics in terms of small tracking error and smaller shock. The research results provide a novel data-driven method for AMT as a soft starter.