Robust Control for a Spatially Three-Dimensional Heat Transfer Process

Reliable modeling and robust control of heat transfer processes are tasks with many applications in engineering. Such tasks are relevant, for example, in control of high-temperature fuel cells, in manufacturing of semiconductor devices, control and modeling of welding processes, and for a reliable description of tube-like gas heater structures. For this reason, control-oriented modeling procedures for spatially distributed heating systems are described in this paper. The resulting models, derived from a spatial semi-discretization employing a finite volume modeling technique, are parameterized by means of experimental identification procedures. These models are then used for the design of robust controllers as well as for state and disturbance observers. An experimental validation on a test rig available at the Chair of Mechatronics at the University of Rostock concludes this paper.