Optimal choice of weighting factors in adaptive linear quadratic control

Abstract

Most of the processes in the industry have nonlinear behavior. Control of such processes with conventional control methods could lead to unstable, suboptimal, etc., results. On the other hand, the adaptive control is a technique widely used for controlling of nonlinear systems. The approach here is based on the recursive identification of the external linear model as a linear representation of the originally nonlinear system. The controller then reacts to the change of the working point or disturbances which could occur by the change of the parameters, structure, etc. The polynomial synthesis together with the linear quadratic (LQ) approach is employed here for the controller synthesis. These techniques satisfy basic control requirements such as the stability, the reference signal tracking and the disturbance attenuation. Resulted controller could be tuned with the choice of weighting factors in LQ approach. This work investigates the effect of these factors on control results. Proposed methods are tested on the mathematical model of the isothermal continuous stirred-tank reactor and simulated results are also verified on the real model of the continuous stirred tank reactor. © 2014 Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.