Dissipativity-based decentralized control of interconnected nonlinear chemical processes

Abstract

This paper presents an approach, based on dissipative systems theory, to the analysis and control design of interconnected nonlinear processes. The objective is to design distributed feedback controllers to achieve plant-wide stability. Extensions of classical results on the stability of large-scale interconnected systems lead to input–output dissipativity constraints for each subsystems, encoded as supply rates from input to output interconnecting ports. For each subsystem, a parameterized nonlinear feedback controller is designed using nonlinear dissipative inequalities to ensure that the aforementioned dissipativity constraints are met in closed-loop. One focus of this paper is the design of domination-based nonlinear feedback controllers to meet the above interconnection constraints. This paper also presents new results on the construction of storage functions for control affine systems, as a generalization of physics-based approaches to dissipative systems theory. Control of interconnected chemical reactors with a recycle stream is presented throughout the paper to demonstrate the proposed construction.