A Pragmatic Approach for Assessing the Economic Performance of Model Predictive Control Systems and Its Industrial Application

In this article,an approach for economic performance assessment of model predictive control(MPC) system is presented.The method builds on steady-state economic optimization techniques and uses the linear quadratic Gaussian(LQG) benchmark other than conventional minimum variance control(MVC) to estimate the potential of reduction in variance.The LQG control is a more practical performance benchmark compared to MVC for performance assessment since it considers input variance and output variance,and it thus provides a desired basis for determining the theoretical maximum economic benefit potential arising from variability reduction.Combining the LQG benchmark directly with benefit potential of MPC control system,both the economic benefit and the optimal operation condition can be obtained by solving the economic optimization problem.The proposed algorithm is illustrated by simulated example as well as application to economic performance assessment of an industrial model predictive control system.

Stiffness-damping matching method of an ECAS system based on LQG control

A novel method of matching stiffness and continuous variable damping of an ECAS(electronically controlled air suspension) based on LQG(linear quadratic Gaussian) control was proposed to simultaneously improve the road-friendliness and ride comfort of a two-axle school bus.Taking account of the suspension nonlinearities and target-height-dependent variation in suspension characteristics,a stiffness model of the ECAS mounted on the drive axle of the bus was developed based on thermodynamics and the key parameters were obtained through field tests.By determining the proper range of the target height for the ECAS of the fully-loaded bus based on the design requirements of vehicle body bounce frequency,the control algorithm of the target suspension height(i.e.,stiffness) was derived according to driving speed and road roughness.Taking account of the nonlinearities of a continuous variable semi-active damper,the damping force was obtained through the subtraction of the air spring force from the optimum integrated suspension force,which was calculated based on LQG control.Finally,a GA(genetic algorithm)-based matching method between stepped variable damping and stiffness was employed as a benchmark to evaluate the effectiveness of the LQG-based matching method.Simulation results indicate that compared with the GA-based matching method,both dynamic tire force and vehicle body vertical acceleration responses are markedly reduced around the vehicle body bounce frequency employing the LQG-based matching method,with peak values of the dynamic tire force PSD(power spectral density) decreased by 73.6%,60.8% and 71.9% in the three cases,and corresponding reduction are 71.3%,59.4% and 68.2% for the vehicle body vertical acceleration.A strong robustness to variation of driving speed and road roughness is also observed for the LQG-based matching method.

Active flutter suppression of a multiple-actuated-wing wind tunnel model

In this study, a multi-input/multi-output（MIMO） time-delay feedback controller is designed to actively suppress the flutter instability of a multiple-actuated-wing（MAW） wind tunnel model in the low subsonic flow regime. The unsteady aerodynamic forces of the MAW model are computed based on the doublet-lattice method（DLM）. As the first attempt, the conventional linear quadratic-Gaussian（LQG） controller is designed to actively suppress the flutter of the MAW model. However, because of the time delay in the control loop, the wind tunnel tests illustrate that the LQG-controlled MAW model has no guaranteed stability margins. To compensate the time delay, hence, a time-delay filter, approximated via the first-order Pade approximation, is added to the LQG controller. Based on the time-delay feedback controller, a new digital control system is constructed by using a fixed-point and embedded digital signal processor（DSP） of high performance. Then, a number of wind tunnel tests are implemented based on the digital control system.The experimental results show that the present time-delay feedback controller can expand the flutter boundary of the MAW model and suppress the flutter instability of the open-loop aeroelastic system effectively.

Investigation on transonic flutter active auppression with CFD-Based ROMs

The calculation of accurate unsteady aerodynamic forces is critical in the analysis of aeroelastic problems,however the efficiency is low because of high computational costs of the computational fluid dynamics(CFD)portion.Additionally,direct integrated CFD and computational structural dynamics(CSD)technique is unsuitable for the analysis of ASE and the flutter active suppression in state-space form.A reduced-order model(ROM)based on Volterra series was developed using CFD calculation and used to predict the flutter coupled with the structure.The closed-loop control systems designed by the sliding mode control(SMC)and linear quadratic Gaussian(LQG)control were constructed with ROM/CSD to suppress the AGARD 445.6wing flutter.The detailed implementation of the two control approaches is presented,and the flutter suppression effectiveness is discussed and compared.The results indicate that SMC method can make the controlled object response decay to the stable equilibrium more rapidly and has better control effects than the LQG control.