The feasibility of model predictive control (MPC) applied to a laboratory gas turbine installation is investigated. MPC explicitly incorporates (input and output) constraints in its optimizations, which explains the choice for this computationally demanding control strategy. Strong nonlinearities, displayed by the gas turbine installation, cannot always be handled adequately by standard linear MPC. Therefore, we resort to nonlinear methods, based on successive linearization and nonlinear prediction as well as the combination of these. We implement these methods, using a nonlinear model of the installation, and compare them to linear MPC. It is shown that controller performance can be improved, without increasing controller execution-time excessively.

Issue Section:
Gas Turbines: Controls and Diagnostics
Topics:
Gas turbines, Predictive control, Control equipment
1.
Bequette
B. W.
,
1991
, “
Nonlinear Control of Chemical Processes: A Review
,”
Ind. Eng. Chem. Res.
, Vol.
30
, No.
7
, pp.
1391
–
1413
.
2.
Brengel
D. D.
, and
Seider
W. D.
,
1989
, “
Multistep Nonlinear Predictive Controller
,”
Ind. Eng. Chem. Res.
, Vol.
28
, No.
12
, pp.
1812
–
1822
.
3.
Botros
K. K.
,
Campbell
P. J.
, and
Mah
D. B.
,
1991
, “
Dynamic Simulation of Compressor Station Operation Including Centrifugal Compressor and Gas Turbine
,”
ASME JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING FOR GAS TURBINES AND POWER
, Vol.
113
, pp.
300
–
311
.
4.
De Oliveira
N. M. C.
, and
Biegler
L. T.
,
1995
, “
An Extension of Newton-Type Algorithms for Nonlinear Process Control
,”
Automatica
, Vol.
31
, No.
2
, pp.
281
–
286
.
5.
Garcia, C. E., 1984, “Quadratic Dynamic Matrix Control of Nonlinear Processes: An Application to a Batch Reaction Process,” presented at the 1984 AIChE Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA.
6.
Gattu
G.
, and
Zafiriou
E.
,
1992
, “
Nonlinear Quadratic Dynamic Matrix Control With State Estimation
,”
I & EC Res.
, Vol.
31
, No.
4
, pp.
1096
–
1104
.
7.
Lee, J. H., and Ricker, N. L., 1993, “Extended Kalman Filter Based Nonlinear Model Predictive Control,” Proceedings, Amer. Contr. Conf., pp. 1895–1899.
8.
Li
W. C.
, and
Biegler
L. T.
,
1989
, “
Process Control Strategies for Constrained Nonlinear Systems
,”
Ind. Eng. Chem. Res.
, Vol.
27
, No.
8
, pp.
1421
–
1433
.
9.
Morari, M., Garcia, C. E., Lee, J. H., and Prett, D. M., 1991, “Model Predictive Control,” Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
10.
van Essen, H. A., 1995, “Design of a Laboratory Gas Turbine Installation,” ISBN 90-5282-452-5, Eindhoven University of Technology.
11.
Vroemen, B. G., 1997, “Model Predictive Control of a Gas Turbine Installation,” technical report WFW 97.002, Eindhoven University of Technology.
This content is only available via PDF.
Copyright © 1999
 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers
You do not currently have access to this content.