Decentralized control design for nonlinear plants: a v-metric approach

In this paper, a new v-metric based approach is proposed to design decentra lized controllers for multi-unit nonlinear plants that admit a set of plant decompositions in an operating space. Similar to the gap metric approach i n literature, it is shown that the operating space can also be divided into several subregions based on a v-metric indicator, and each of the subregio ns admits the same controller structure. A comparative case study is presen ted to display the advantages of proposed approach over the gap metric appr oach. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.