Multi-dimensional gain scheduling with application to power plant control

This paper deals with gain scheduling control of a power plant model, which is an example of a multi-dimensional nonlinear system. Linear observer-based controllers are designed for a number of linear approximations of the system model in a set of operating points, and gain-scheduling control can subsequently be achieved by interpolation between each controller. We use the Youla-Jabr-Bongiorno-Kucera parameterization to achieve a smooth scheduling between the controllers. However, for multi-dimensional systems it is often not straightforward to obtain appropriate scheduling parameters. To address this issue, we propose a systematic approach to scheduling between controllers using multiple scheduling parameters. The approach is tested on a simple, but highly nonlinear model of a coal-fired power plant.