A model of a laboratory plant with internal delays

Abstract

An unconventional approach to modeling of systems with internal delays utilized on a thermal laboratory plant is presented in this paper. The so-called anisochronic models are characterized by the existence of state (internal) delays, possible both distributed and lumped, as an important part of system dynamics. The studied laboratory plant was designed as a thermal heating circuit system at Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Czech Republic, and it represents a model with dynamic properties similar to those of some real heating system. The modeling methodology is based on assumption of all significant delays and latencies in the model. The motivation for the modeling of this plant was double. First, the dynamics of the plant exhibits unconventional step responses which cannot be explained by a standard analytic means. Second, the authors of this contribution intend to use the obtained anisochronic mathematical description of the plant with the view of the verification of algebraic control algorithms designed earlier.