Quantum mechanics

Control (management)

Engineering

Biology

Control variable

Robust control

Control engineering

Computer science

Controller (irrigation)

Mechanical engineering

Thermodynamics

Physics

Nonlinear system

Sliding mode control

Mathematics

Agronomy

Work (physics)

State variable

Mathematical analysis

Artificial intelligence

Variable structure control

Partial differential equation

Control theory (sociology)

Mechanics

Convection

Machine learning

Chemical Engineering Science

In this work a robust nonlinear scheme is proposed to control spatially distributed convective systems described by first-order hyperbolic partial differential equations by manipulating the flow velocity. The proposed scheme is designed after the method of characteristics is used to establish key structural properties of the system dynamics. The resulting feedback control, which can be seen as a proportional integral controller with variable integration time, does not require measurements for several axial points nor infinite dimensional state estimations. The proposed controller is applied successfully to two heat exchange simulation examples and a nonisothermical plug flow reactor. It is shown that it is robust in the face of uncertain parameters and load disturbances. Finally, the performance of the robust controller is compared to other control applications.

Robust continuous velocity control of convective spatially distributed systems