Finite-time convergent observer design and adaptive control of a nonlinear boiler system

In this paper, based on recently developed finite-time convergent observer designs with time-varying coefficients, an observer is first designed to yield the explicit values of unknown parameters of a nonlinear boiler system. Then an adaptive controller is designed to regulate the states of the boiler system. Compared to existing results, the contribution of the paper is two-fold: (i) the new approach is able to handle the case when all parameters are unknown; (ii) faster convergence rates can be achieved to identify the unknown parameters and regulate the boiler system. Computer simulations are conducted to show the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive control schemes.