An LMI-based approach for robust stabilization of time delay systems containing saturating actuators

Email: elhaous_fati{at}yahoo.fr Corresponding author. Email: elh_tissir{at}yahoo.fr Received on September 8, 2005; Accepted on July 24, 2006 This paper deals with the problem of robust stabilization foruncertain systems with input saturation and time delay in thestate. The parameter uncertainties are time-varying and unknownbut are norm bounded. Sufficient conditions obtained via a linearmatrix inequality formulation are stated to guarantee the localstabilization. The method of synthesis consists in determiningsimultaneously a state feedback control law and an associateddomain of safe admissible states for which the stability ofthe closed-loop system is guaranteed when control saturationseffectively occur. Numerical examples are used to demonstratethe effectiveness of the proposed design technique.     

Optimal control for the thermistor problem with a current limiting device

Email: cimatti{at}dm.unipi.it Received on September 26, 2005; Accepted on August 2, 2006 The problem of finding in the thermistor problem the optimaldifference of applied potential in order to minimize a suitablecost functional involving the temperature is studied. We findthe optimal system in the elementary case of constant electricconductivity. In addition, a theorem of existence of the optimalsolution is given in the general case of conductivities dependingon the temperature.     

Numerical stabilization of polynomial and matrix

Email: jdhan{at}sia.cn Email: zhjiang{at}sia.cn Corresponding author Email: nyy{at}sia.cn Received on March 6, 2006; Accepted on September 4, 2006 In this paper, the conception of numerical stabilization, whichis related to mantissa digits of computer and dimensions ofsystem, is described; and several strategies for the numericalstabilization of polynomial and matrix are presented.     

Estimates of the region of attraction of continuous-time cascade systems

Xiao-Song Yang Department of Mathematics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan, Hubei 430074, People's Republic of China Huimin Li Departments of Mathematics and Control and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan, Hubei 430074, People's Republic of China Corresponding author. Email: yangxs{at}cqupt.edu.cn Received on May 1, 2006; Accepted on October 6, 2006 In this paper, we first present some new sufficient conditionsfor global asymptotic stability of continuous-time cascade systems.Then, we give some detailed results on the region of attractionof continuous-time cascade systems. Some examples are presentedto illustrate these results.     

Necessary conditions for infinite-horizon Volterra optimal control problems with time delay

Email: csfvega{at}dm.uba.ar Received on August 17, 2006; Accepted on September 8, 2007 Necessary conditions are proved for optimal control problemsinvolving an infinite horizon and terminal conditions at infinitywhose states are governed by Volterra integral equations withnon-linear time delay.     

Optimal control problems of parabolic equations with an infinite number of variables and with equality constraints

Email: bahaa_gm{at}hotmail.com Received on December 6, 2005; Accepted on December 7, 2006 Optimal control problems of systems governed by parabolic equationswith an infinite number of variables and with additional equalityconstraints are considered. The extremum principle, as wellas sufficient condition of optimality, is formulated for theNeumann problem by using certain extensions of Dubovitskii–Milyutinmethod.     

Control consolidation with a threshold: an algorithm

Email: ariane.chapelle{at}ulb.ac.be Corresponding author. Email: aszafarz{at}ulb.ac.be Received on 14 October 2005. Accepted on 21 November 2006. Besides multiple voting rights, board representation and shareholders’monitoring, control tunnelling over firms can be reached throughpyramids, cross-ownership and other complex features. This phenomenonis frequent in Europe and Asia. However, the theoretical literaturehas not yet converged towards a well-defined and robust measurementof integrated control that takes into account the thresholdfor control as applied in practice. Based on graph theory, thispaper aims at filling this gap and proposes a new algorithmfor evaluating the control tunnelling exerted by the firms’ultimate shareholders. Then, the paper discusses the variousforms of control existing next to voting shares, like multiplevoting rights, board representation and active monitoring, beforesuggesting ways to include them into the modelling of control.     

Infinite horizon quadratic control of linear singularly perturbed systems with small state delays: an asymptotic solution of Riccati-type equations

Email: valery{at}techunix.technion.ac.il Received on January 31, 2006; Accepted on October 5, 2006 An infinite horizon linear-quadratic optimal control problemfor a singularly perturbed system with multiple point-wise anddistributed small delays in the state variable is considered.The set of Riccati-type equations, associated with this problemby the control optimality conditions, is studied. Since thesystem in the control problem is singularly perturbed, the equationsof this set are also perturbed by a small parameter of the singularperturbations. The zero-order asymptotic solution to this setof equations is constructed and justified. Based on this asymptoticsolution, parameter-free sufficient conditions for the existenceand uniqueness of solution to the original optimal control problemare established.     

Time optimal control of retarded parabolic systems

Email: skrakowi{at}usk.pk.edu.pl Received on June 15, 2005; Accepted on July 12, 2006 In this paper, the time-optimal control problem for parabolicsystems in which time lags appear in the integral form bothin the state equation and in the Neumann boundary conditionis presented. The particular properties of the optimal controlare discussed.     

A semi-Markov maintenance model with credit rating application

Email: g.damico{at}unich.it Received on 6 December 2006. Accepted on 2 April 2008. The impact of a preventive rating maintenance policy on therating process is investigated through the definition of a semi-Markovmaintenance model with imperfect repair at random times. Theresults allow us to study the rating migrations process in thetransient and the asymptotic case.     

Gearbox failure diagnosis based on vector autoregressive modelling of vibration data and dynamic principal component analysis

Email: mgt.liu{at}utoronto.ca Email: makis{at}mie.utoronto.ca Received on 4 August 2006. Accepted on 14 December 2006. An effective gearbox failure diagnosis helps prevent catastrophicgearbox failure and can contribute to significant economic benefits.This paper proposes a gear failure diagnosis method based onvector autoregressive modelling of high-frequency vibrationdata, dimensionality reduction applying dynamic principal componentanalysis (PCA) and condition monitoring using a multivariatecontrol chart. After extracting useful information from thevibration data obtained from distinct directions via dynamicPCA, a failure diagnosis scheme is implemented and tested usingreal gearbox vibration data. It is shown that the failure diagnosisscheme can indicate the gear teeth failure pattern when thegear is damaged, which has not been demonstrated in the previousstudies. For a comparison, PCA is applied to the same data set.The results show that the advantages of dynamic PCA over PCAfor failure diagnosis using vibration data consist not onlyin indicating more accurately the occurrence of incipient faultand the actual gear condition, but also in a much lower falsealarm rate.     

Decentralized dynamic pole assignment with low-order compensators

N. Karcanias Control Engineering Centre, School of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, City University, Northampton Square London EC1V OHB, UK Email: n.karcanias{at}city.ac.uk Received on June 14, 2006; Accepted on October 2, 2006 The problem of arbitrary pole placement via dynamic decentralizedoutput feedback is studied for minimal systems described bya proper transfer function matrix P(s) R^{m x p}(s) (m = m_i andp = p_i), with McMillan degree n. The family of controllersto be used includes those decentralized controllers with channelswhose ith channel has maximum observability index at most d_i.The method presented here is based on asymptotic linearizationaround a decentralized degenerate compensator of the pole placementmap related to the problem. It is shown that the method worksgenerically when m⁺p > n, where m⁺ = min{d_i(p_i + m_i –1) + m_i}, i = 1, ..., , and the smallest d_i of the compensatorof the ith channel is the integral part of (n – pm_i)/p(p_i+ m_i – 1).     

Maximum principle for optimal control of sterilization of prepackaged food

Mi-Xia Wu College of Applied Sciences, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100022, People's Republic of China Corresponding author. Present address: 23 Paca PL, Rockville, MD 20852-1123, USA. E-mail: sunbing{at}amss.ac.cn, sunamss{at}gmail.com Received on November 13, 2006; Revision received December 8, 2006. Accepted on January 20, 2007 This paper is concerned with an optimal control problem of thesterilization of prepackaged food. The Dubovitskii–Milyutinapproach is adopted in investigation of the Pontryagin's maximumprinciple of the system. The necessary condition is presentedfor the problem with fixed final horizon and phase constraints.     

Optimal boundary feedback stabilization of a string with moving boundary

Email: gugat{at}am.uni-erlangen.de Received on April 30, 2006; We consider a finite string that is fixed at one end and subjectto a feedback control at the other end which is allowed to move.We show that the behaviour is similar to the situation whereboth ends are fixed: As long as the movement is not too fast,the energy decays exponentially and for a certain parameterin the feedback law it vanishes in finite time. We considermovements of the boundary that are continuously differentiablewith a derivative whose absolute value is smaller than the wavespeed. We solve a problem of worst-case optimal feedback control,where the parameter in the feedback law is chosen such thatthe worst-case L^p-norm of the space derivative at the fixedend of the string is minimized (p [1, )). We consider the worstcase both with respect to the initial conditions and with respectto the boundary movement. It turns out that the parameter forwhich the energy vanishes in finite time is optimal in thissense for all p.     

New conditions on absolute stability of uncertain Lur'e systems and the maximum admissible perturbed bound

Email: fhao{at}buaa.edu.cn Received on April 5, 2006; Accepted on September 10, 2006 The robust absolute stability problem for structured uncertainLur'e systems is considered in this paper by using Popov criterionand extended strictly positive real lemma. The conditions onrobust absolute stability for Lur'e systems with structureduncertainties are established in terms of multilinear matrixinequalities. An estimate of the maximum bound of all admissibleperturbations is given by a generalized eigenvalue problem.Finally, a numerical example is worked out to illustrate theefficiency of the main results.     

Properties of the weighted logarithmic matrix norms

Mingzhu Liu Department of Mathematics, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China Email: ghu{at}hit.edu.cn, ghuca{at}yahoo.ca Email: mzliu{at}hit.edu.cn Received on January 31, 2006; Accepted on December 9, 2006 In this paper, we are concerned with the properties of the weightedlogarithmic matrix norms. A relation between the elliptic logarithmicmatrix norm and the weighted logarithmic matrix norm is given.Based on Lyapunov equations, two weighted logarithmic matrixnorms are constructed which are less than 1-logarithmic matrixnorm and -logarithmic matrix norm, respectively. Then, an iterativescheme is presented to obtain the logarithmically -efficientmatrix norm. Numerical examples are given to illustrate theresults.     

Therapy burden, drug resistance, and optimal treatment regimen for cancer chemotherapy

Email: boldrini{at}ime.unicamp.brAuthor to whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: michel{at}Incc.br Three nonlinear models of tumour cell growth under continuousdelivery of cycle nonspecific anticancer agents are studied.A dynamical optimization problem with the objective of minimizingthe final level of tumour cells is posed for these mathematicalsetups. The simplest setup does not possess toxicity constraints,whereas the other setups contain a dynamical equation describingthe therapy burden as a toxicity criterion. In addition, thethird setting contains the dynamics of drug resistant cells.A discussion conceming the optimal strategies of the respectivemodels is performed.     

Necessary and sufficient conditions for parameter insensitive disturbance-rejection problems with dynamic output feedback

Email: otsuka{at}j.dendai.ac.jp Received on November 11, 2005; Accepted on December 16, 2006 In this paper, necessary and sufficient conditions for the parameterinsensitive disturbance-rejection problem with dynamic outputfeedback which was studied in Otsuka (1999) to be solvable aregiven for the structured uncertain linear systems. Further,necessary and sufficient conditions for the solvability of theproblems with static output feedback and state feedback arealso studied as special cases. The obtained results containsome extensions of the previous results to the structured uncertainlinear systems.     

Estimation of nonlinear systems without a priori structural information and its application in Hammerstein model identification with dynamic nonlinearities

Email: er-wei-bai{at}uiowa.edu Received on July 30, 2005; Accepted on July 23, 2006 In the paper, we discuss identification of a nonlinear systemwithout structural information and propose two methods, thekernel method and the orthonormal basis method. The convergenceresults are established for both methods without a priori structuralinformation. We then apply the results to identification ofHammerstein models with an unknown dynamic nonlinearity. Itis also shown that identification of the linear part in Hammersteinmodels is possible with no knowledge of the dynamic nonlinearity.     

Delay-dependent dissipativity of singular time-delay systems

Email: msmahmoud{at}kfupm.edu.sa Received on September 21, 2007; Revision received March 10, 2008. Accepted on April 30, 2008 In this paper, new results are established for the delay-dependentproblems of dissipative analysis and state-feedback synthesisof singular time-delay (STD) systems with polytopic uncertainties.The developed results for the nominal singular system encompassavailable results on approach, passivity and positive realnessfor STD systems as special cases. All the sufficient stabilityconditions are cast as linear matrix inequality-based feasibilitytests. Robust dissipativity results are also derived. Numericalexamples are provided.