Optimal trajectory determination and tracking of an autoclave curing process: A model based approach

This work deals with a model-based approach to nonlinear (NL) parabolic distributed parameter system control. We address two problems in the optimization and control of the autoclave lay-up curing process as presented in [11]. The first is to find the best process trajectory corresponding to the shortest possible operating time. The second is to determine the process control required to track the optimized trajectory within the constraints of the system. In previous work, a simulation based approach was used called local criteria optimization (LCO) [10]. Here the former problem is stated as a constrained optimization problem. A predictive type approach with a penalty method is solved by the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm. For the tracking problem, the well-known Internal Model Control (IMC) structure is used for the predictive control strategy. Finally, we show that a time-varying linear model around the optimal profile can be used for the on-line optimization like in [4].