Convex Formulation of Controller Synthesis for Piecewise-Affine Systems

This thesis is divided into three main parts. The contribution of the first part is to present a controller synthesis method to stabilize piecewise-affine (PWA) slab systems based on invariant sets. Inspired by the theory of sliding modes, sufficient stabilization conditions are cast as a set of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs) by proper choice of an invariant set which is a target sliding surface. The method has two steps: the design of the attractive sliding surface and the design of the controller parameters. While previous approaches to PWA controller synthesis are cast as Bilinear Matrix Inequalities (BMIs) that can, in some cases, be relaxed to LMIs at the cost of adding conservatism, the proposed method leads naturally to a convex formulation. Furthermore, the LMIs obtained in this work have lower dimension when compared to other methods because the dimension of the closed-loop state space is reduced. In the second part of the thesis, it is further shown that the proposed approach is less conservative than other approaches. In other words, it will be shown that for every solution of the LMIs resulting from previous approaches, there exists a solution for the LMIs obtained from the proposed method. Furthermore, it will be shown that while previous convex controller synthesis methods have no solutions to their LMIs for some examples of PWA systems, the approach proposed in this thesis yields a solution for these examples. The contribution of the last part of this thesis is to formulate the PWA time-delay synthesis problem as a set of LMIs. In order to do so, we first define a sliding surface, then control laws are designed to approach the specified sliding surface and ensure that the trajectories will remain on that surface. Then, using Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals, sufficient conditions for exponential stability of the resulting reduced order system will be obtained. Several applications such as pitch damping of a helicopter (2nd order system), rover path following example (3rd order system) and active flutter suppression (4th order system) along with some other numerical examples are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approaches

Stability analysis and controller synthesis for a class of piecewise smooth systems

This thesis deals with the analysis and synthesis of piecewise smooth (PWS) systems. In general, PWS systems are nonsmooth systems, which means their vector fields are discontinuous functions of the state vector. Dynamic behavior of nonsmooth systems is richer than smooth systems. For example, there are phenomena such as sliding modes that occur only in nonsmooth systems. In this thesis, a Lyapunov stability theorem is proved to provide the theoretical framework for the stability analysis of PWS systems. Piecewise affine (PWA) and piecewise polynomial (PWP) systems are then introduced as important subclasses of PWS systems. The objective of this thesis is to propose efficient computational controller synthesis methods for PWA and PWP systems. Three synthesis methods are presented in this thesis. The first method extends linear controllers for uncertain nonlinear systems to PWA controllers. The result is a PWA controller that maintains the performance of the linear controller while extending its region of convergence. However, the synthesis problem for the first method is formulated as a set of bilinear matrix inequalities (BMIs), which are not easy to solve. Two controller synthesis methods are then presented to formulate PWA and PWP controller synthesis as convex problems, which are numerically tractable. Finally, to address practical implementation issues, a time-delay approach to stability analysis of sampled-data PWA systems is presented. The proposed method calculates the maximum sampling time for a sampled-data PWA system consisting of a continuous-time plant and a discrete-time emulation of a continuous-time PWA state feedback controller

Stability analysis and stabilization of discrete-time piecewise affine systems

This work addresses the problems of global stabilization and local stability analysis of discrete-time piecewise affine (PWA) systems. To tackle the global stabilization problem, this work considers a PWA state feedback control law, a recently proposed implicit PWA representation and piecewise quadratic (PWQ) Lyapunov candidate functions. Through Finsler’s Lemma, congruence transformations and some structural assumptions, quasi-LMI sufficient conditions to ensure the global exponential stability of the origin of the closed-loop PWA system are derived from the stability conditions. An algorithm is proposed to solve the quasi-LMI conditions and compute the stabilizing gains. Regarding the problem of local stability analysis, this work proposes a method to test the local nonnegativity of PWQ functions using the implicit representation. This method is used to assess the local stability of the origin of PWA systems by considering PWQ Lyapunov candidate functions. Estimates of the Region of Attraction of the Origin (RAO) are obtained as level sets of the Lyapunov function. Approaches to obtain maximized estimates of the RAO are therefore discussed.Este trabalho trata dos problemas de estabilização global e análise de estabilidade local de sistemas afim por partes (PWA, do inglês, Piecewise Affine) de tempo discreto. Para tratar o problema de estabilização global, considera-se uma lei de controle do tipo realimentação de estados afim por partes, uma representação implícita de sistemas PWA e funções de Lyapunov quadraticas por partes (PWQ, do inglês, Piecewise Quadratic). Através do Lema de Finsler, transformações de congruência e algumas suposições de estrutura, condições suficientes na forma de quasi-LMIs para assegurar a estabilidade exponencial global da origem do sistema PWA em malha fechada são derivadas das condições de estabilidade. Um algoritmo para resolver as condições quasi-LMIs e computar os ganhos estabilizantes é proposto. Quanto ao problema de análise local de estabilidade, um método para testar a não negatividade local de funções PWQ usando a representação implícita é proposto. Este método é então utilizado para verificar a estabilidade local da origem de sistemas PWA através de funções de Lyapunov PWQ. Estimativas da região de atração da origem (RAO, do inglês, Region of Attraction of the Origin) são obtidas como curvas de nível da função de Lyapunov. Abordagens para maximizar a estimativa da RAO são então discutida

Fault tolerant control for bimodal piecewise affine systems

This thesis addresses the design of fault-tolerant controllers and a fault identification technique for bimodal piecewise affine systems. A new fault-tolerant control methodology is presented. Fault-tolerant, state feedback controllers are synthesized for piecewise-affine (PWA) systems while minimizing an upper bound on the expected value of a quadratic cost function. The controllers are designed to deal with partial loss of control authority in the closed loop PWA system. The proposed controller design technique stabilizes and satisfies performance bounds for both the nominal and faulty systems. Another contribution is the development of a fault identification technique for bimodal piecewise affine (PWA) systems. A Luenberger-based observer structure is applied to estimate partial loss of control authority in PWA systems. More specifically, the unknown value of the fault parameter is estimated by an observer equation obtained from a Lyapunov function. The design procedure is formulated as a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) and guarantees asymptotic stability of the estimation error, provided the norm of the input is upper and lower bounded by positive constants. The new PWA identification method is illustrated in a numerical example. Asa third contribution, an active fault-tolerant controller structure is proposed for bimodal PWA systems. The new active fault-tolerant controller structure is illustrated in a numerical example

Fault tolerant control for partial loss of control authority in aircraft using piecewise affine slab models

In this paper, a new fault tolerant control methodology is proposed for partial loss of control authority in aircraft using piecewise affine (PWA) slab models while minimizing an upper bound on a quadratic cost function. The proposed controller stabilizes and satisfies performance bounds for both the nominal and faulty systems. The controller design criteria are cast as a set of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs) that can be solved efficiently. The new technique is illustrated in a numerical example for the Beechcraft 99 aircraft model