OPTIMAL-CONTROL OF HVAC SYSTEMS USING DDP AND NLP TECHNIQUES

The objective of this study is to apply the differential dynamic progr amming (DDP) technique of optimal control to heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems and to compare its performance with a non-linear programming (NLP) technique using the sequential quadratic programming method. The DDP technique is briefly described and studied . Limitations of the technique are noted. Three cases of a system that has been treated previously in the literature are optimized by the tw o techniques and the computational times compared, The study shows DDP to be efficient compared with NLP for the example problems. NLP is, h owever, more robust and general and can treat constraints on the state variables directly. Further investigation is needed for larger-scale problems to fully explore the features of the two methods.