An integrated plant/control design method and application in hard disk drives

One approach in servo control to achieve a high track density in hard disk drives is to minimise the H2 norm from disturbances to position error signal. The H2 performance optimisation is then deemed as a matter of great significance. This paper presents an integrated design method involving plant modification and controller design sequentially to achieve the H2 performance requirement. A linear matrix inequality-based approach is developed for the plant damping ratio modification using the plant output. The proposed model modification method is then applied to the voice coil motor plant in hard disk drives, followed by the optimal H2 controller design using the Riccati equation method with the modified plant. It turns out that the modified plant leads to better H2 performance, stability margins than the original plant.