On-Line Implementation of a Nonlinear Distributed Observer for a Multizone Furnace - Comparative Study with a Nonlinear Filter

Abstract The dynanlic behavior of an experimental multizone electrical fumace is described by nonlinear partial differential equations. On this basis, a nonlinear distributed observer of the load temperature profiles is designed. The resulting observer equations are discretized by orthogonal collocation on finite elements and implemented on-line on a PC. The observer shows very good properties: easy tuning, robustness and small computer resources. Some experimental results and computer simulations are presented and discussed. Moreover, a comparison is petfonned between the observer and a distributed extended Kalman filter, including on-line perfonnances and computational implementation aspects. It is shown that the observer requires less computational effort for sinlilar perfomances.