Moment Matching Based Model Reduction for LPV State-Space Models

We present a novel algorithm for reducing the state dimension, i.e. order, of linear parameter varying (LPV) discrete-time state-space (SS) models with affine dependence on the scheduling variable. The input-output behavior of the reduced order model approximates that of the original model. In fact, for input and scheduling sequences of a certain length, the input-output behaviors of the reduced and original model coincide. The proposed method can also be interpreted as a reachability and observability reduction (minimization) procedure for LPV-SS representations with affine dependence

Identification of low order models for large scale processes

Many industrial chemical processes are complex, multi-phase and large scale in nature. These processes are characterized by various nonlinear physiochemical effects and fluid flows. Such processes often show coexistence of fast and slow dynamics during their time evolutions. The increasing demand for a flexible operation of a complex process, a pressing need to improve the product quality, an increasing energy cost and tightening environmental regulations make it rewarding to automate a large scale manufacturing process. Mathematical tools used for process modeling, simulation and control are useful to meet these challenges. Towards this purpose, development of process models, either from the first principles (conservation laws) i.e. the rigorous models or the input-output data based models constitute an important step. Both types of models have their own advantages and pitfalls. Rigorous process models can approximate the process behavior reasonably well. The ability to extrapolate the rigorous process models and the physical interpretation of their states make them more attractive for the automation purpose over the input-output data based identified models. Therefore, the use of rigorous process models and rigorous model based predictive control (R-MPC) for the purpose of online control and optimization of a process is very promising. However, due to several limitations e.g. slow computation speed and the high modeling efforts, it becomes difficult to employ the rigorous models in practise. This thesis work aims to develop a methodology which will result in smaller, less complex and computationally efficient process models from the rigorous process models which can be used in real time for online control and dynamic optimization of the industrial processes. Such methodology is commonly referred to as a methodology of Model (order) Reduction. Model order reduction aims at removing the model redundancy from the rigorous process models. The model order reduction methods that are investigated in this thesis, are applied to two benchmark examples, an industrial glass manufacturing process and a tubular reactor. The complex, nonlinear, multi-phase fluid flow that is observed in a glass manufacturing process offers multiple challenges to any model reduction technique. Often, the rigorous first principle models of these benchmark examples are implemented in a discretized form of partial differential equations and their solutions are computed using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) numerical tools. Although these models are reliable representations of the underlying process, computation of their dynamic solutions require a significant computation efforts in the form of CPU power and simulation time. The glass manufacturing process involves a large furnace whose walls wear out due to the high process temperature and aggressive nature of the molten glass. It is shown here that the wearing of a glass furnace walls result in change of flow patterns of the molten glass inside the furnace. Therefore it is also desired from the reduced order model to approximate the process behavior under the influence of changes in the process parameters. In this thesis the problem of change in flow patterns as result of changes in the geometric parameter is treated as a bifurcation phenomenon. Such bifurcations exhibited by the full order model are detected using a novel framework of reduced order models and hybrid detection mechanisms. The reduced order models are obtained using the methods explained in the subsequent paragraphs. The model reduction techniques investigated in this thesis are based on the concept of Proper Orthogonal Decompositions (POD) of the process measurements or the simulation data. The POD method of model reduction involves spectral decomposition of system solutions and results into arranging the spatio-temporal data in an order of increasing importance. The spectral decomposition results into spatial and temporal patterns. Spatial patterns are often known as POD basis while the temporal patterns are known as the POD modal coefficients. Dominant spatio-temporal patterns are then chosen to construct the most relevant lower dimensional subspace. The subsequent step involves a Galerkin projection of the governing equations of a full order first principle model on the resulting lower dimensional subspace. This thesis can be viewed as a contribution towards developing the databased nonlinear model reduction technique for large scale processes. The major contribution of this thesis is presented in the form of two novel identification based approaches to model order reduction. The methods proposed here are based on the state information of a full order model and result into linear and nonlinear reduced order models. Similar to the POD method explained in the previous paragraph, the first step of the proposed identification based methods involve spectral decomposition. The second step is different and does not involve the Galerkin projection of the equation residuals. Instead, the second step involves identification of reduced order models to approximate the evolution of POD modal coefficients. Towards this purpose, two different methods are presented. The first method involves identification of locally valid linear models to represent the dynamic behavior of the modal coefficients. Global behavior is then represented by ‘blending’ the local models. The second method involves direct identification of the nonlinear models to represent dynamic evolution of the model coefficients. In the first proposed model reduction method, the POD modal coefficients, are treated as outputs of an unknown reduced order model that is to be identified. Using the tools from the field of system identification, a blackbox reduced order model is then identified as a linear map between the plant inputs and the modal coefficients. Using this method, multiple local reduced LTI models corresponding to various working points of the process are identified. The working points cover the nonlinear operation range of the process which describes the global process behavior. These reduced LTI models are then blended into a single Reduced Order-Linear Parameter Varying (ROLPV) model. The weighted blending is based on nonlinear splines whose coefficients are estimated using the state information of the full order model. Along with the process nonlinearity, the nonlinearity arising due to the wear of the furnace wall is also approximated using the RO-LPV modeling framework. The second model reduction method that is proposed in this thesis allows approximation of a full order nonlinear model by various (linear or nonlinear) model structures. It is observed in this thesis, that, for certain class of full order models, the POD modal coefficients can be viewed as the states of the reduced order model. This knowledge is further used to approximate the dynamic behavior of the POD modal coefficients. In particular, reduced order nonlinear models in the form of tensorial (multi-variable polynomial) systems are identified. In the view of these nonlinear tensorial models, the stability and dissipativity of these models is investigated. During the identification of the reduced order models, the physical interpretation of the states of the full order rigorous model is preserved. Due to the smaller dimension and the reduced complexity, the reduced order models are computationally very efficient. The smaller computation time allows them to be used for online control and optimization of the process plant. The possibility of inferring reduced order models from the state information of a full order model alone i.e. the possibility to infer the reduced order models in the absence of access to the governing equations of a full order model (as observed for many commercial software packages) make the methods presented here attractive. The resulting reduced order models need further system theoretic analysis in order to estimate the model quality with respect to their usage in an online controller setting

A review of convex approaches for control, observation and safety of linear parameter varying and Takagi-Sugeno systems

This paper provides a review about the concept of convex systems based on Takagi-Sugeno, linear parameter varying (LPV) and quasi-LPV modeling. These paradigms are capable of hiding the nonlinearities by means of an equivalent description which uses a set of linear models interpolated by appropriately defined weighing functions. Convex systems have become very popular since they allow applying extended linear techniques based on linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) to complex nonlinear systems. This survey aims at providing the reader with a significant overview of the existing LMI-based techniques for convex systems in the fields of control, observation and safety. Firstly, a detailed review of stability, feedback, tracking and model predictive control (MPC) convex controllers is considered. Secondly, the problem of state estimation is addressed through the design of proportional, proportional-integral, unknown input and descriptor observers. Finally, safety of convex systems is discussed by describing popular techniques for fault diagnosis and fault tolerant control (FTC).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Solution Approximation for Atmospheric Flight Dynamics Using Volterra Theory

This dissertation introduces a set of novel approaches in order to facilitate and enrich Volterra theory as a nonlinear approximation technique for constructing mathematical solutions from the governing relationships describing aircraft dynamic behavior. These approaches reconnect Volterra theory and flight mechanics research, which has not been addressed in the technical literature for over twenty years. Volterra theory is known to be viable in modeling weak nonlinearities, but is not particularly well suited for directly describing high performance aircraft dynamics. In order to overcome these obstacles and restrictions of Volterra theory, the global Piecewise Volterra Approach has been developed. This new approach decomposes a strong nonlinearity into weaker components in several sub-regions, which individually only require a low order truncated series. A novel Cause-and-Effect Analysis of these low order truncated series has also been developed. This new technique in turn allows system prediction before employing computer simulation, as well as decomposition of existing simulation results. For a computationally complex and large envelope airframe system, a Volterra Parameter-Varying Model Approach has also been developed as a systematically efficient approach to track the aircraft dynamic model and its response across a wide range of operating conditions. The analytical and numerical solutions based on the proposed methodology show the ability of Volterra theory to help predict, understand, and analyze nonlinear aircraft behavior beyond that attainable by linear theory, or more difficult to extract from nonlinear simulation, which in turn leads to a more efficient nonlinear preliminary design tool

Identifying Position-Dependent Mechanical Systems: A Modal Approach Applied to a Flexible Wafer Stage

Increasingly stringent performance requirements for motion control necessitate the use of increasingly detailed models of the system behavior. Motion systems inherently move, therefore, spatio-temporal models of the flexible dynamics are essential. In this paper, a two-step approach for the identification of the spatio-temporal behavior of mechanical systems is developed and applied to a lightweight prototype industrial wafer stage. The proposed approach exploits a modal modeling framework and combines recently developed powerful linear time invariant (LTI) identification tools with a spline-based mode-shape interpolation approach to estimate the spatial system behavior. The experimental results for the wafer stage application confirm the suitability of the proposed approach for the identification of complex position-dependent mechanical systems, and its potential for motion control performance improvements

Fault-tolerant wide-area control of power systems

In this thesis, the stability and performance of closed-loop systems following the loss of sensors or feedback signals (sensor faults) are studied. The objective is to guarantee stability in the face of sensor faults while optimising performance under nominal (no sensor fault) condition. One of the main contributions of this work is to deal effectively with the combinatorial binary nature of the problem when the number of sensors is large. Several fault-tolerant controller and observer architectures that are suitable for different applications are proposed and their effectiveness demonstrated. The problems are formulated in terms of the existence of feasible solutions to linear matrix inequalities. The formulations presented in this work are described in a general form and can be applied to a large class of systems. In particular, the use of fault-tolerant architectures for damping inter-area oscillations in power systems using wide-area signals has been demonstrated. As an extension of the proposed formulations, regional pole placement to enhance the damping of inter-area modes has been incorporated. The objective is to achieve specified damping ratios for the inter-area modes and maximise the closed-loop performance under nominal condition while guaranteeing stability for all possible combinations of sensors faults. The performances of the proposed fault-tolerant architectures are validated through extensive nonlinear simulations using a simplified equivalent model of the Nordic power system.Open Acces

Generalized robust gain-scheduled PID controller design for affine LPV systems with polytopic uncertainty

In the paper a generalized guaranteed cost output-feedback robust gain-scheduled PID controller synthesis is presented for affine linear parameter-varying systems under polytopic model uncertainty. The controller synthesis is generalized in a sense that it covers robust, robust gain-scheduled, and robust switched (with arbitrary switching algorithm) PID controller design. The proposed centralized/decentralized controller method is based on Bellman–Lyapunov equation, guaranteed cost, and parameter-dependent quadratic stability. The proposed sufficient robust stability and performance conditions are derived in the form of bilinear matrix inequalities (BMI) which can efficiently be solved or further linearized. As the main result, the suggested performance and stability conditions without any restriction on the controller structure are convex functions of the scheduling and uncertainty parameters. Hence, there is no need for applying multi-convexity or other relaxation techniques and consequently the proposed solution delivers a less conservative design method. The viability of the novel design technique is demonstrated and evaluated through numerical examples

LPVcore: MATLAB Toolbox for LPV Modelling, Identification and Control

This paper describes the LPVcore software package for MATLAB developed to model, simulate, estimate and control systems via linear parameter-varying (LPV) input-output (IO), state-space (SS) and linear fractional (LFR) representations. In the LPVcore toolbox, basis affine parameter-varying matrix functions are implemented to enable users to represent LPV systems in a global setting, i.e., for time-varying scheduling trajectories. This is a key difference compared to other software suites that use a grid or only LFR-based representations. The paper contains an overview of functions in the toolbox to simulate and identify IO, SS and LFR representations. Based on various prediction-error minimization methods, a comprehensive example is given on the identification of a DC motor with an unbalanced disc, demonstrating the capabilities of the toolbox. The software and examples are available on www.lpvcore.net