PHYSICAL-MODEL BASED CONTROL - EXPERIMENTS WITH A STIRRED-TANK HEATER

In the pursuit of generic methods, control theory has become separated from its prime objective: the control of physical systems. These gene ric techniques have a wide range of applications yet do not easily all ow inclusion of system specific information into the control design. T here are two important categories for which the inclusion of system-sp ecific information is important: partially-known systems and non-linea r systems. Physical-Model Based Control (PMBC) is a novel approach to using such system-specific information. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the experimental application of PMBC to a partially-kn own nonlinear system. In so doing, the performance of the PMBC method is evaluated, and it is demonstrated how process and control engineeri ng insights can be combined within this PMBC framework to yield a nove l system-specific control algorithm.