Control and State Estimation of the One-Phase Stefan Problem via Backstepping Design

This paper develops a control and estimation design for the one-phase Stefan problem. The Stefan problem represents a liquid-solid phase transition as time evolution of a temperature profile in a liquid-solid material and its moving interface. This physical process is mathematically formulated as a diffusion partial differential equation (PDE) evolving on a time-varying spatial domain described by an ordinary differential equation (ODE). The state-dependency of the moving interface makes the coupled PDE-ODE system a nonlinear and challenging problem. We propose a full-state feedback control law, an observer design, and the associated output-feedback control law via the backstepping method. The designed observer allows estimation of the temperature profile based on the available measurement of solid phase length. The associated output-feedback controller ensures the global exponential stability of the estimation errors, the H1- norm of the distributed temperature, and the moving interface to the desired setpoint under some explicitly given restrictions on the setpoint and observer gain. The exponential stability results are established considering Neumann and Dirichlet boundary actuations.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Automatic Contro

CONTROL OF SYSTEMS ON SPATIAL DOMAINS WITH MOVING BOUNDARIES: 3D PRINTING AND TRAFFIC

Until roughly the year 2000, control algorithms (of the kind that can be physically implemented and provided guarantees of stability and performance) were mostly available only for systems modeled by ordinary differential equations. In other words, while controllers were available for finite-dimensional systems, such as robotic manipulators of vehicles, they were not available for systems like fluid flows. With the emergence of the “backstepping” approach, it became possible to design control laws for systems modeled by partial differential equations (PDEs), i.e., for infinite dimensional systems, and with inputs at the boundaries of spatial domains. But, until recently, such backstepping controllers for PDEs were available only for systems evolving on fixed spatial PDE domains, not for systems whose boundaries are also dynamical and move, such as in systems undergoing transition of phase of matter (like the solid-liquid transition, i.e., melting or crystallization). In this invited article we review new control designs for moving-boundary PDEs of both parabolic and hyperbolic types and illustrate them by applications, respectively, in additive manufacturing (3D printing) and freeway traffic