Global Stabilization of Large-Scale Hydraulic Networks Using Quantized Proportional Control

Abstract An industrial case study involving a hydraulic network underlying a district heating system is investigated. The flexible structure of the network calls for control structure which is able to handle changes in the network structure. For this purpose a set of decentralized proportional controllers have been proposed. These controllers make use only of locally available information, and in order to make implementation of the control laws possible, the control signals are required to be communicated across the network. To accommodate this a quantized version of the control laws are considered, and the results show that the designed closed loop system maintains its stability properties despite the structural changes introduced in the system.