Parameter Subset Selection in Differential Equation Models with Dead Time

Abstract

A methodology is proposed for parameter ranking and parameter subset selection for nonlinear ordinary differential equation (ODE) models with time delay, in which delay is treated as an unknown model parameter. The methodology builds on earlier algorithms for ranking model parameters in systems without time delay (Yao et al., 2003; Thompson et al., 2009) and for finding the optimum number of parameters for estimation (Wu et al., 2011; McLean and McAuley, 2012a). A polymerization reactor system for producing bio-source polyether is used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison with prior results obtained by Cui et al. (2015) who neglected the time delay.