Optimal Control of Transient Flows due to Valve Operations

Transient flow in pipeline caused by valve operations can be reduced by operating the valve in a proper manner. In this paper, a systematic approach to determine this optimal operation is presented. This approach leads to an optimal control problem which is formulated and solved in order to yield the optimal feedback gain. A clear advantage of such approach is that this obtained optimal feedback gain could be applied to set up a closed-loop valve control system which is less sensitive to the disturbances and to the uncertainties of the system modeling. Causing minimum fluid transient, this valve controller may optimally change the flow rate to any feasible desired value within a specific time period. The implementation of this optimal valve control system is also presented. The effects of the weighting factors on the penalties are also studied.