First Experimental Results of Nonlinear Control in Irrigation Canals

Abstract This paper presents various real-time results obtained on an experimental canal reach, with two types of nonlinear controllers. The controllers have been designed on the basis of a simple collocation model previously proposed for water dynamics in canal reaches. They only use water level measurements and are based on a nonlinear observer for water flow rate estimation. Stability conditions for the corresponding closed-loop schemes result from previous studies, and successful experimental results show that such conditions can indeed be achieved in practice.