A comparative study between linear and sliding mode adaptive controllers for a hot gas generator

A hot gas generator is a compact heat exchanger that produces high temperature or enthalpy gases. This paper presents two methods for controlling the system. The first one is an adaptive sliding mode controller that is a Lyapunov based method and proposed to confront the dynamic modeling deficiencies and system uncertainties. The second one is a linear adaptive controller that gives a new attractive ability to the system which can track a complicated requested path. Each of the presented controllers has some capabilities that may be preferred to other. In this paper, these methods are extensively compared by several transient inputs. On the other hand, since heat exchangers are typically uncertain systems, a robust controller is necessary to apply on them. Therefore, robustness is another criterion for the comparison of the mentioned controllers. By considering the results of this comparison, one could be aware of the application domain of each controller.