2017 11th Asian Control Conference (ASCC)

Gold Coast Convention Centre, Australia

December 17-20, 2017

Quantitative robust control design of

discharge air temperature system
Kai Zhang ∗ Keyu Li ∗∗
∗
United Technologies Research Center, Shanghai 201204, P.R. China
(e-mail: ZhangK@utrc.utc.com).
∗∗
United Technologies Research Center, Shanghai 201204, P.R. China
(e-mail: LiKY2@utrc.utc.com).

Abstract: In this paper, a quantitative robust control design is investigated for discharge air
temperature (DAT) system. For this purpose, the DAT system is described by an first-order-
plus-dead-time (FOPDT) model. With first-order Padé approximation for the time delay, both
standard and PI structured H∞ control designs are first employed for the controller synthesis. A
set of control objectives and qualitative robustness properties can be simultaneously considered
by appropriate selection of weighting functions. Then, structured singular value (µ) analysis is
used to quantitatively verify robustness properties of the closed-loop system in the presence of
parametric and/or dynamic uncertainties. The numerical simulations of a typical DAT system
demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control design as compared to classical SIMC PI
control design.

Keywords: Discharge air temperature control, standard and structured H∞ control designs,
quantitative robustness analysis

1. INTRODUCTION Obviously, the control design is quite critical to the DAT

In commercial heating, ventilating, and air conditioning
(HVAC) system, the discharge air temperature (DAT)
system is a critical sub-system to provide air at a con-
trolled temperature for the use in cooling spaces. Because
of its impact on occupants’ comforts, equipment perfor-
mances and operating costs, the control design of DAT
system is a challenging research and industrial problem
with the potential for significant economic benefits (Qu
and Zaheeruddin, 2010). A brief schematic diagram of
DAT system is shown in Fig. 1. The mixed air enters
the cooling coil at temperature Tma and then it is cooled
in the cooling coil by using chilled water. By modulating
a flow control valve, the chilled-water flow rate through
the cooling coil can be well controlled such that the warm
mixed air entering the cooling coil is cooled to achieve a
predetermined temperature. In Fig. 1, the u is the valve
position determined by the designed controller, the Q is
the chilled-water flow rate through the valve and the Tdis
is the DAT to be cooled to achieve its required temperature
Tref .
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of DAT control system
? The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from United
Technologies Research Center.
system to satisfy occupants’ comfort requirements as well
as to reduce energy consumptions. From the practical
point of view, to reduce the computational effort required
in the system identification and control design, the DAT
systems are normally described by first-order-plus-dead-
time (FOPDT) models. The model parameters can be
identified by step test due to its efficiency and economic-
s (Bi et al., 2000; Liu et al., 2013). Then, the controller
is designed based on the identified FOPDT model. Now,
PI controller is still dominant in DAT control design.
But, it has long been recognized that the necessarily low
gains and tedious and sometimes inappropriate tuning
of PI based DAT controllers contributed to poor control
performance (Nesler and Stoecker, 1984). Besides, it is
quite difficult to identify the model accurately and in
practice the parametric and dynamic uncertainties on the
identified models are inevitable (Seborg et al., 2010). Such
differences between identified models and real physical
plants pose a major problem for control design, for in-
stance, the control performances of most PI controllers
greatly depend on the model accuracy. Furthermore, due
to variations of fluid flow rate, heat exchanger fouling and
wears on flow control valves, the dynamics of DAT systems
may vary during operations over time. All of these mod-
el uncertainties could degrade the control performances
and even destabilize the closed-loop system. Therefore, a
quantitative robust control design is quite desirable for
practical DAT system to ensure its stability and control
performances under a certain set of uncertainties.
Several robust control designs have been applied to
DAT/HVAC systems so as to consider model uncertainties,
e.g. robust PID control design (Kasahara et al., 1999)

978-1-5090-1573-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 2612

and H∞ control design (Underwood, 2000). However, the sary weighting functions Wi into the typical feedback con-
closed-loop robustness properties, e.g. robust stability and trol structure where Gp (s) represents plant dynamic model
worst-case control performance, can only be qualitatively and Gd (s) represents the disturbance dynamic model. The
considered by the control design but not quantitatively weighting functions should account for the relative mag-
verified. Meanwhile, the structured singular value (µ) syn- nitude of signals, their frequency dependence and relative
0
thesis is proposed to design a robust stabilizing controller importance. Two exogenous input signals w = [w1 , w2 ]
0
such that the robustness properties of the closed-loop and three regulated signals z = [z1 , z2 , z3 ] are employed,
system are ensured (Doyle, 1985; Fan et al., 1991). The where d = Wd w1 , n = Wn w2 , z1 = Wy y, z2 = Wu u and
motivation of µ synthesis is attractive, unfortunately, now z3 = Wv v. By partitioning P (s) according to the size of
there is no direct method to synthesize such µ robust signals, the system is described as
controllers. Normally, µ synthesis integrates the use of
normal H∞ optimization for the controller synthesis and
      
z(s) w(s) Pzw (s) Pzu (s) w(s)
µ analysis for the robustness properties verification, e.g. = P (s) = (1)
v(s) u(s) Pvw (s) Pvu (s) u(s)
the widely used DK-iteration (Doyle et al., 1991). But,
the control performances and computational efficiency of
u(s) = K(s)v(s) (2)
DK-iteration largely depends on the selection of initial pa-
rameters, and the order of synthesized controller increases where
in every DK-iteration thus tending to be very large. In
Wd (s)Gd (s)Wy (s) 0
" #
addition, the µ synthesis is often difficult to be formulated
directly (Skogestad and Postlethwaite, 2005). As a result, Pzw (s) = 0 0
from the practical point of view, µ synthesis is not suitable −Wd (s)Gd (s)Wv (s) Wn (s)Wv (s)
for quantitative robust control design of DAT system. "
Gp (s)Wy (s)
#
In this paper, to avoid the drawbacks of normal H∞ control Pzu (s) = Wu (s)
and µ synthesis, the proposed quantitative robust control −Gp (s)Wv (s)
design consists of robust H∞ control design and quanti-
tative robustness analysis of the closed-loop system with Pvw (s) = [−Wd (s)Gd (s) Wn (s)]
designed controller. First, both standard non-structured
and PI structured H∞ control designs (Apkarian and Noll, Pvu (s) = [−Gp (s)]
2006) are employed for the controller synthesis where the
principle of phase and gain control polices is used for the The standard H∞ control problem is to achieve a stabi-
selection of weighting functions to consider a set of control lizing controller K(jω) which minimizes the H∞ norm
objectives and qualitative robustness properties (Zhang of the augmented closed-loop transfer function matrix
et al., 2013b). Then, reliable µ analysis is used to quanti- Fl (P, K)(jω) defined as
tatively ensure the closed-loop robustness properties, e.g kFl (P, K)(jω)k∞ = max σ̄(Fl (P, K)(jω)), ∀ω ∈ R (3)
ω
robust stability and worst-case performance (Zhang et al.,
2013a, 2014). The trade-off between different control per- where Fl (P, K)(jω) = Pzw (jω) + Pzu (jω)K(jω)(I −
formances and robustness properties can be well consid- Pvu (jω)K(jω))−1 Pvw (jω).
ered by the proposed control design. For the comparison Let γmin be the minimum value of kFl (P, K)(jω)k∞ over
purposes, the classical SIMC PI control design is also used all stabilizing controllers. The H∞ sub-optimal control
here (Skogestad, 2003). problem is: given a γ > γmin , find all stabilizing controllers
The remaining sections of this article are arranged as fol- such that kFl (P, K)(jω)k∞ ≤ γ. This optimization can
lows. In Section 2, standard non-structured and PI struc- be solved efficiently and by reducing γ iteratively an
tured H∞ control designs are briefly introduced. Then, optimal solution is achieved (Doyle et al., 1989). Due to
µ analysis is employed to have quantitative closed-loop the property of H∞ norm, kFl (P, K)(jω)k∞ ≤ γ ensures
robustness properties. In Section 3, the H∞ control de- kTzj wi (jω)k∞ ≤ γ, that is, these control objectives are
signs and robustness analysis are validated on a typical satisfied simultaneously with the designed H∞ controller
DAT system with numerical simulations. The control per- K(jω).
formances and robustness properties are also compared
with a SIMC PI controller. Conclusions are summarized
in Section 4.

2. H∞ CONTROL DESIGN AND ROBUSTNESS

ANALYSIS

2.1 H∞ control design

It is known that typical control design objectives such as

reference tracking, control bandwidth, disturbance rejec-
tion and robust stability can be expressed as constraints on
the H∞ norm of well-chosen closed-loop transfer functions.
Therefore, in the general H∞ control framework of Fig. 2,
the augmented plant P (s) is built by incorporating neces-
Fig. 2. General H∞ control design framework
In spite of great theoretical success of standard H∞ control
designs, we must admit that how to incorporate necessary

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weighting functions and determine them is critical to have z(s) =Fu (N, ∆)w(s)
an satisfactory H∞ controller. Therefore, the principle of (6)
=(N22 + N21 ∆(I − N11 ∆)−1 N12 )w(s)
phase and gain control polices is employed here for the
Based on general LFT framework, the structured singular
selection of related weighting functions such that a set
of control objectives as well as robustness properties can
be considered simultaneously. On the other hand, com-
pared to standard non-structured H∞ controllers, struc-
tured controllers such as PID, lead-lag and others are
still preferred in practical industrial control designs, for
example, PI control designs are dominant in DAT and
other HVAC control systems. The main reason is that
standard H∞ controller is usually of high order, not easy
to be implemented and often difficult to re-tune in case
of model changes (Apkarian et al., 2007). So, besides
the standard H∞ control design, in this paper the PI
structured H∞ control design is also investigated for DAT Fig. 3. General LFT framework
system. Compared to the standard H∞ control design, value µ∆ (M ) is defined (Skogestad and Postlethwaite,
the PI structured H∞ control design is to synthesize an 2005)
H∞ optimal controller with a prescribed more under-
1
standable PI structure which is ready to be employed µ∆ (M ) ,
by current DAT system. Nonsmooth optimization tech- min{km | det(I − km M ∆) = 0, ∆ ∈ B ∆ }
nique can be used to have a locally optimal PI structured (7)
H∞ controller (Gahinet and Apkarian, 2011) which is The closed-loop robust stability is then determined by the
ready to be used by practical DAT control system. following theorem (Zhou et al., 1996)
Theorem 1 Assume that the nominal system M and the
2.2 Quantitative robustness analysis perturbation ∆ are stable. Then the M − ∆ is stable for
any ∆ ∈ B ∆ if and only if
Although H∞ control designs are able to qualitatively ac- µ∆ (M (jω)) < 1, ∀ω (8)
count for parametric and dynamic uncertainties by appro- The reciprocal of upper bound of µ∆ (M ) is referred to as
priate selection of weighting functions, it is quite necessary deterministic robustness margin
to perform quantitative robustness analysis to quantita-
1
tively ensure the closed-loop robustness properties, e.g. kDRM = (9)
robust stability and worst-case performance. To achieve max µ∆ (M )
this goal, the original stochastic system with parametric It means how much the normalized parametric and dy-
and dynamic uncertainties has to be rearranged by the namic uncertainties can be enlarged simultaneously before
uncertainty block ∆ and the nominal augmented plant the closed-loop system gets instable, e.g. kDRM ≥ 1 means
N (s) as shown in Fig. 3, where w(s) consists of exogenous that the closed-loop system is ensured to be stable in the
input signals and z(s) consists of regulated variables (Zhou presence of considered uncertainties.
et al., 1996). N can always be chosen so that ∆ is block
Besides robust stability, the worst-case performances of
diagonal, that is, ∆ ∈ ∆
the closed-loop system should also be investigated. The
∆ ,{diag [δ1r It1 , . . . , δVr ItV , δVc +1 Ir1 , . . . , δVc +S IrS , ∆V +S+1 , worst-case performance λwc is defined as
. . . , ∆V +S+F ] : δkr ∈ R, δVc +i ∈ C, ∆V +S+j ∈ Cmj ×mj , λwc (ω) , sup σ̄(Fu (N, ∆)(jω)), ∀ω (10)
∆∈B ∆
1 ≤ k ≤ V, 1 ≤ i ≤ S, 1 ≤ j ≤ F }
As accurate calculation of the values of kDRM and λwc (ω)
where R and C denote the fields of real and complex
r th is NP-hard 1 , lower and upper bounds of µ∆ (M )/kDRM
numbers, δk represents the k real scale parametric uncer-
and λwc are usually computed. MatLab Robust Control
tainty with tk repetition, δVc +i represents the ith repeated Toolbox makes use of the results from Young and Dolye
complex scalar uncertainty with ri repetition and ∆V +S+j (1990) and Packard et al. (2000) to calculate their bounds.
represents the j th full dynamic uncertainty with size mj ×
mj . By incorporating suitable normalization functions in 3. NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS
N (s), we have δkr ∈ [−1, 1], |δic | ≤ 1 and σ̄(∆j ) ≤ 1 and the
notation B ∆ is introduced for the norm bounded diagonal In this paper, as shown in Fig. 1, the proposed quantitative
uncertainty block robust control design is applied to a typical single-input-
B ∆ := {∆ ∈ ∆ : σ̄(∆) ≤ 1} (4) single-output (SISO) DAT system which is identified as an
By partitioning N (s) compatibly with the dimension of FOPDT model of (11),
∆(s) we have Tnom (s) Knom e−Dnom s
     Gnom (s) = = (11)
∆y N11 N12 ∆u U (s) Tnom s + 1
= ; M = N11 (5)
z N21 N22 w The nominal parameters Knom , Tnom and Dnom can be
The closed-loop transfer function from w(s) to z(s) is determined by open-loop step test for a practical building,
represented by an upper linear fractional transforma- 1 given any algorithm to compute µ, there will be problems for which
tion (LFT) Fu (N, ∆), the algorithm cannot find the answer in polynomial time.

2614
e.g. Knom = −0.1, Tnom = 400 and Dnom = 100. Since the
time delay is difficult to be directly handled by standard
H∞ control design or PI structured H∞ control design,
its first-order Padé approximation is used and we have
the Padé approximated model of (12) (Carr and O’Dwyer,
1999)
−Knom (Dnom s − 2)
Gpade (s) = (12)
(Tnom s + 1)(Dnom s + 2)
As discussed in Section 2.1, with the general H∞ control
design framework of Fig. 2, we have Gp (s) = Gpade (s). The
disturbance dynamic model Gd (s) the weighting function
Wd and the exogenous input w1 are not necessary here.
According to phase and gain control policies (Zhang et al.,
2013b), the following weighting functions are selected for
the synthesis of standard H∞ controller K∞ (s) PI
Fig. 4. DAT responses to step change with K∞ (s), K∞ (s)
PI
and KSIM C (s)
(s + 2.99) × 10−1
Wv (s) = , Wn = Wy = Wu = 1 Table 1. Control performances with
s + 2.99 × 10−6 PI PI
K∞ (s), K∞ (s) and KSIM C (s)
PI K∞ (s) P I (s)
K∞ PI
KSIM
For the synthesis of PI structured H∞ controller K∞ (s), C (s)
the weighting functions are selected as Rise time/s 130 180 190
Setting time/s 281 497 605
(1.2s + 12.0) × 10−3 Undershoot 0% 2.5% 4.0%
Wv (s) = , Wn = Wy = Wu = 1 Steady-state offset 0% 0% 0%
s + 1.0 × 10−6 ISE 560 663 676
ITAE 33270 56972 57095
With the nominal model Gnom (s), as comparisons the
PI
SIMC PI controller KSIM C (s) is also well tuned here to
have fast responses with nice robustness properties (Sko-
gestad, 2003). Below are the designed controllers

−2361.8(s + 0.0025)(s + 0.02)

K∞ (s) =
(s + 45.73)(s + 0.04385)(s + 2.985 × 10−6 )
PI −21.2s − 0.047
K∞ (s) =
s
PI −20.0s − 0.05
KSIM C (s) =
s
The nominal DAT responses to step change with designed
controllers are shown in Fig. 4. The detailed time-domain
control performances are also listed in table 1, e.g. rise PI
Fig. 5. Robustness margin kDRM with K∞ (s), K∞ (s) and
time, setting time, undershoot, steady-state offset, inte- PI
KSIM C (s)
gral of squared error (ISE) and integral of time multi-
ply absolute error (ITAE). As expected, the simulation K = Knom + 0.3Knom δK ; |δK | ≤ 1
results demonstrate that for the nominal model the full
third-order unstructured H∞ controller K∞ (s) tacks the T = Tnom + 0.3Tnom δT ; |δT | ≤ 1
reference and/or rejects the disturbance successfully and D = Dnom + 0.3Dnom δD ; |δD | ≤ 1
PI
faster than the PI structured H∞ controller K∞ (s) and
SIMC PI controller KSIM PI
(s). It is also notable that the Such assumption is reasonable based on our plenty of field
C
degradation of the closed-loop control performances with data for practical DAT system.
PI
K∞ (s) is not significant compared to the full unstruc- As discussed in Section 2.2, reliable quantitative robust-
tured K∞ (s), but easy understanding and simplified im- ness analysis is performed to verify the closed-loop robust
plementation of the PI structured H∞ control design could stability and worst-case performance in the presence of
present a interesting benefit for practical DAT system. assumed parametric uncertainties. Since µ analysis is diffi-
Due to the fact that it is quite difficult to accurately cult to handle time delay directly, the deterministic robust-
identify FOPDT model parameters and these parameters ness margin kDRM is calculated by fine gridding of D in
may vary during system operations, the parametric uncer- the uncertain range. As shown in Fig. 5, the lower bounds
PI PI
tainties on Gnom (s) are considered here by assuming 30% of kDRM with K∞ (s), K∞ (s) and KSIM C (s) are always
variations on their nominal values, that is, larger than 1, that is, the closed-loop system is ensured to
be stable in the presence of assumed parametric uncertain-

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 PI
ties. For instance, with K∞ (s) the smallest kDRM = 1.56
which means that even in the presence of 46.8% variations
on nominal model parameters, the closed-loop system can
still be stable. The worst-case performance of the uncertain
sensitivity functions and corresponding DAT responses to
step change are shown in Fig. 6.
Fig. 6. Worst-case performances of sensitivity function-
PI
s and DAT responses with K∞ (s), K∞ (s) and
PI
KSIM C (s)
From above analysis it is demonstrated that full unstruc-
tured K∞ (s) has some advantages over PI structured
PI PI
K∞ (s) and classical KSIM C (s) in terms of nominal time-
domain control performances but at cost of a certain
level of degradations of robust stability and worst-case
PI
performance. The K∞ (s) is able to achieve a good bal-
ance among control performances, robustness properties
and practical implementations. The analysis shows that
the proposed quantitative robust control design allows
us to make a trade-off between control performance and
quantitative robustness properties in the presence of un-
certainties. Note that although classical PI control design
is used here for comparisons, it is not to conclude that
H∞ control design can replace PI control design. Actually,
considering controlled plants, hardware limitations and
required control objectives, H∞ and PI control designs
should be used complementarily. For example, PI struc-
tured H∞ controller can be used initially for further PI
tuning and PI controller deign can also provide valuable
information for appropriate selection of weighting func-
tions used by H∞ control designs.
4. CONCLUSIONS
This paper focuses on developing quantitative robust con-
trol design for discharge air temperature (DAT) system.
To achieve this goal, first standard and PI structured
H∞ control designs are employed for the controller syn-
thesis. The trade-off between different control objectives
and qualitative robustness properties can be achieved by
appropriate weighting functions. Then, µ analysis is used
to quantitatively verify the closed-loop robust stability
and worst-case performance in the presence of parametric
and dynamic uncertainties. The numerical simulations of
a typical SISO DAT system demonstrate the effectiveness
of proposed control design. In the future, the neglected
high-frequency dynamics of DAT model and statistical
2616
information of the parametric uncertainties should be
investigated. The application of the quantitative robust
control design to multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO)
DAT system is also promising. It is expected that model
identification, uncertainty quantification and comparisons
between numerical simulation and real-time experimental
result can be achieved for practical DAT systems.
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