Internal flow management in a multi-zone climate control unit

In this contribution, we examine a dynamic model describing the evolution of internal climate conditions in a closed environment partitioned into zones for which different climate conditions must be guaranteed. The zones are not separated, large air masses are exchanged among them, and the behavior of each zone is strongly affected by those in the neighbor zones. We discuss a control strategy which, by acting on the heating and ventilation devices of the overall system, is able to achieve the control task while efficiently managing the internal flow. It is pointed out that the controller is hybrid and decentralized. An additional feature of the controller is that it takes on values in a finite set. The possible implementation in a networked environment is briefly discussed.