Model predictive control of VAV zone thermal systems concerning bi-linearity and gain nonlinearity

A new control strategy is proposed for zone thermal systems to deal with nonlinearities, uncertainties and constraints. The temperature control of VAV zone thermal systems is investigated. The system consists of two constrained processes: a zone temperature process with input–output bi-linearity and uncertainty, and a damper process with gain nonlinearity. Model predictive control is adopted for control design: a bilinear predictive controller is designed for the zone temperature process and a gain-scheduled robust predictive controller for the damper process. Both controllers deal with constraints directly and they operate in a cascaded manner. Case studies are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.

► Robust MPC is applied to control the temperature of zone thermal systems.
► Bi-linearity and gain nonlinearity are considered in control design.
► The influence of cooling load uncertainty on the control performance is analyzed.
► Robust stability region is derived according to a user-defined parameter.