Decentralised control for complex systems - An invited survey

© 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. With the advancement of science and technology, practical systems are becoming more complex. Decentralised control has been recognised as a practical, feasible and powerful tool for application to large scale interconnected systems. In this paper, past and recent results relating to decentralised control of complex large scale interconnected systems are reviewed. Decentralised control based on modern control approaches such as variable structure techniques, adaptive control and backstepping approaches are discussed. It is well known that system structure can be employed to reduce conservatism in the control design and decentralised control for interconnected systems with similar and symmetric structure is explored. Decentralised control of singular large scale systems is also reviewed in this paper

Robust and Decentralized Control of Web Winding Systems

This research addresses the velocity and tension regulation problems in web handling, including those found in the single element of an accumulator and those in the large-scale system settings. A continuous web winding system is a complex large-scale interconnected dynamics system with numerous tension zones to transport the web while processing it. A major challenge in controlling such systems is the unexpected disturbances that propagate through the system and affect both tension and velocity loops along the way. To solve this problem, a unique active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) strategy is proposed. Simulation results show remarkable disturbance rejection capability of the proposed control scheme in coping with large dynamic variations commonly seen in web winding systems. Another complication in web winding system stems from its large-scale and interconnected dynamics which makes control design difficult. This motivates the research in formulating a novel robust decentralized control strategy. The key idea in the proposed approach is that nonlinearities and interactions between adjunct subsystems are regarded as perturbations, to be estimated by an augmented state observer and rejected in the control loop, therefore making the local control design extremely simple. The proposed decentralized control strategy was implemented on a 3-tension-zone web winding processing line. Simulation results show that the proposed control method leads to much better tension and velocity regulation quality than the existing controller common in industry. Finally, this research tackles the challenging problem of stability analysis. Although ADRC has demonstrated the validity and advantage in many applications, the rigorous stability study has not been fully addressed previously. To this end, stability characterization of ADRC is carried out in this work. The closed-loop system is first reformulated, resulting in a form that allows the application of the well established singular perturbation method. Based on the decom

Robust and Decentralized Control of Web Winding Systems

This research addresses the velocity and tension regulation problems in web handling, including those found in the single element of an accumulator and those in the large-scale system settings. A continuous web winding system is a complex large-scale interconnected dynamics system with numerous tension zones to transport the web while processing it. A major challenge in controlling such systems is the unexpected disturbances that propagate through the system and affect both tension and velocity loops along the way. To solve this problem, a unique active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) strategy is proposed. Simulation results show remarkable disturbance rejection capability of the proposed control scheme in coping with large dynamic variations commonly seen in web winding systems. Another complication in web winding system stems from its large-scale and interconnected dynamics which makes control design difficult. This motivates the research in formulating a novel robust decentralized control strategy. The key idea in the proposed approach is that nonlinearities and interactions between adjunct subsystems are regarded as perturbations, to be estimated by an augmented state observer and rejected in the control loop, therefore making the local control design extremely simple. The proposed decentralized control strategy was implemented on a 3-tension-zone web winding processing line. Simulation results show that the proposed control method leads to much better tension and velocity regulation quality than the existing controller common in industry. Finally, this research tackles the challenging problem of stability analysis. Although ADRC has demonstrated the validity and advantage in many applications, the rigorous stability study has not been fully addressed previously. To this end, stability characterization of ADRC is carried out in this work. The closed-loop system is first reformulated, resulting in a form that allows the application of the well established singular perturbation method. Based on the decom

Decentralized adaptive neural network control of interconnected nonlinear dynamical systems with application to power system

Traditional nonlinear techniques cannot be directly applicable to control large scale interconnected nonlinear dynamic systems due their sheer size and unavailability of system dynamics. Therefore, in this dissertation, the decentralized adaptive neural network (NN) control of a class of nonlinear interconnected dynamic systems is introduced and its application to power systems is presented in the form of six papers. In the first paper, a new nonlinear dynamical representation in the form of a large scale interconnected system for a power network free of algebraic equations with multiple UPFCs as nonlinear controllers is presented. Then, oscillation damping for UPFCs using adaptive NN control is discussed by assuming that the system dynamics are known. Subsequently, the dynamic surface control (DSC) framework is proposed in continuous-time not only to overcome the need for the subsystem dynamics and interconnection terms, but also to relax the explosion of complexity problem normally observed in traditional backstepping. The application of DSC-based decentralized control of power system with excitation control is shown in the third paper. On the other hand, a novel adaptive NN-based decentralized controller for a class of interconnected discrete-time systems with unknown subsystem and interconnection dynamics is introduced since discrete-time is preferred for implementation. The application of the decentralized controller is shown on a power network. Next, a near optimal decentralized discrete-time controller is introduced in the fifth paper for such systems in affine form whereas the sixth paper proposes a method for obtaining the L2-gain near optimal control while keeping a tradeoff between accuracy and computational complexity. Lyapunov theory is employed to assess the stability of the controllers --Abstract, page iv

Decentralized sliding mode control and estimation for large-scale systems

This thesis concerns the development of an approach of decentralised robust control and estimation for large scale systems (LSSs) using robust sliding mode control (SMC) and sliding mode observers (SMO) theory based on a linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach. A complete theory of decentralized first order sliding mode theory is developed. The main developments proposed in this thesis are: The novel development of an LMI approach to decentralized state feedback SMC. The proposed strategy has good ability in combination with other robust methods to fulfill specific performance and robustness requirements. The development of output based SMC for large scale systems (LSSs). Three types of novel decentralized output feedback SMC methods have been developed using LMI design tools. In contrast to more conventional approaches to SMC design the use of some complicated transformations have been obviated. A decentralized approach to SMO theory has been developed focused on the Walcott-Żak SMO combined with LMI tools. A derivation for bounds applicable to the estimation error for decentralized systems has been given that involves unknown subsystem interactions and modeling uncertainty. Strategies for both actuator and sensor fault estimation using decentralized SMO are discussed.The thesis also provides a case study of the SMC and SMO concepts applied to a non-linear annealing furnace system modelderived from a distributed parameter (partial differential equation) thermal system. The study commences with a lumped system decentralised representation of the furnace derived from the partial differential equations. The SMO and SMC methods derived in the thesis are applied to this lumped parameter furnace model. Results are given demonstrating the validity of the methods proposed and showing a good potential for a valuable practical implementation of fault tolerant control based on furnace temperature sensor faults