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

State estimation for coupled reaction-diffusion PDE systems using modulating functions

Many systems with distributed dynamics are described by partial differential equations (PDEs). Coupled reaction-diffusion equations are a particular type of these systems. The measurement of the state over the entire spatial domain is usually required for their control. However, it is often impossible to obtain full state information with physical sensors only. For this problem, observers are developed to estimate the state based on boundary measurements. The method presented applies the so-called modulating function method, relying on an orthonormal function basis representation. Auxiliary systems are generated from the original system by applying modulating functions and formulating annihilation conditions. It is extended by a decoupling matrix step. The calculated kernels are utilized for modulating the input and output signals over a receding time window to obtain the coefficients for the basis expansion for the desired state estimation. The developed algorithm and its real-time functionality are verified via simulation of an example system related to the dynamics of chemical tubular reactors and compared to the conventional backstepping observer. The method achieves a successful state reconstruction of the system while mitigating white noise induced by the sensor. Ultimately, the modulating function approach represents a solution for the distributed state estimation problem without solving a PDE online

On Polynomial Stability of Coupled Partial Differential Equations in 1D

We study the well-posedness and asymptotic behaviour of selected PDE-PDE and PDE-ODE systems on one-dimensional spatial domains, namely a boundary coupled wave-heat system and a wave equation with a dynamic boundary condition. We prove well-posedness of the models and derive rational decay rates for the energy using an approach where the coupled systems are formulated as feedback interconnections of impedance passive regular linear systems.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in the Proceedings of "Semigroups of Operators: Theory and Applications", Kazimierz Dolny, Poland, October 201

Semi-definite programming and functional inequalities for Distributed Parameter Systems

We study one-dimensional integral inequalities, with quadratic integrands, on bounded domains. Conditions for these inequalities to hold are formulated in terms of function matrix inequalities which must hold in the domain of integration. For the case of polynomial function matrices, sufficient conditions for positivity of the matrix inequality and, therefore, for the integral inequalities are cast as semi-definite programs. The inequalities are used to study stability of linear partial differential equations.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure