Decentralized control of interconnected dynamical systems

Abstract

A decentralized model-following approach to design a suboptimal controller for large interconnected dynamical systems is considered. The system is assumed to be subjected to an input disturbance. Interactions between subsystems are represented by a reduced order model. Gain parameters of the decentralized controller are independent of the initial conditions. A modified decentralized model-following controller is also developed and compared with the previous approach through an illustrative example. The implementation of the developed controller is simpler than the first approach. The resulting controller can be easily implemented using microprocessors. A decentralized interaction-rejection approach is also considered. A practice industrial system controlling the thickness of a slab in a hot rolling finishing mill is considered. Decentralized controllers using the previous approaches are developed to maintain variations of slab thickness as small as possible.