Data-driven modeling and predictive control for boiler–turbine unit using fuzzy clustering and subspace methods

This paper develops a novel data-driven fuzzy modeling strategy and predictive controller for boiler–turbine unit using fuzzy clustering and subspace identification (SID) methods. To deal with the nonlinear behavior of boiler–turbine unit, fuzzy clustering is used to provide an appropriate division of the operation region and develop the structure of the fuzzy model. Then by combining the input data with the corresponding fuzzy membership functions, the SID method is extended to extract the local state-space model parameters. Owing to the advantages of the both methods, the resulting fuzzy model can represent the boiler–turbine unit very closely, and a fuzzy model predictive controller is designed based on this model. As an alternative approach, a direct data-driven fuzzy predictive control is also developed following the same clustering and subspace methods, where intermediate subspace matrices developed during the identification procedure are utilized directly as the predictor. Simulation results show the advantages and effectiveness of the proposed approach.