  The dead-zone is one of the most common hard nonlinearities in industrial
actuators and its presence may drastically compromise control systems stability
and performance. In this work, an adaptive variable structure controller is
proposed to deal with a class of uncertain nonlinear systems subject to a
non-symmetric dead-zone input. The adopted approach is primarily based on the
sliding mode control methodology but enhanced by an adaptive fuzzy algorithm to
compensate the dead-zone. Using Lyapunov stability theory and Barbalat's lemma,
the convergence properties of the closed-loop system are analytically proven.
In order to illustrate the controller design methodology, an application of the
proposed scheme to an electro-hydraulic system is introduced. The performance
of the control system is evaluated by means of numerical simulations.
