Abstract: A distributive adaptive control system for HVAC control and a method for controlling the temperature in a building with one or more zones is disclosed. The control system and method are based on a design that may accommodate buildings with multiple interconnected thermal zones. The system includes a controller for each zone of the building. Each controller is designed to regulate temperature while attenuating the effect of directly neighboring zones, wall temperature, weather conditions and heat gains. The control mechanism does not require any prior accurate knowledge of system parameters but instead calibrates itself to meet the needs of each thermal zone. An appropriate adaptive law may be used for learning the building and HVAC system parameters and auto-calibrating the controller. The proposed system and method can extend the life of the HVAC by compensating for a wide range of tear and wear and other defects in the equipment.

Abstract: A distributive adaptive control system for HVAC control and a method for controlling the temperature in a building with one or more zones is disclosed. The control system and method are based on a design that may accommodate buildings with multiple interconnected thermal zones. The system includes a controller for each zone of the building. Each controller is designed to regulate temperature while attenuating the effect of directly neighboring zones, wall temperature, weather conditions and heat gains. The control mechanism does not require any prior accurate knowledge of system parameters but instead calibrates itself to meet the needs of each thermal zone. An appropriate adaptive law may be used for learning the building and HVAC system parameters and auto-calibrating the controller. The proposed system and method can extend the life of the HVAC by compensating for a wide range of tear and wear and other defects in the equipment.

Abstract: The control of flexible systems is often difficult due to the exact frequencies of the elastic modes being hard to identify. These flexible modes may change over time, or vary between units of the same system. The variation in the modal dynamics may cause a degradation in performance or even instabilities unless compensated for by the control scheme. Controllers designed for these types of systems use notch filters for mode suppression. However variation in the parameters of the flexible modes may cause the need for wide notch filters. An adaptive scheme is proposed which uses an online estimator based on plant parameterization. The scheme may not use probe signals and may not rely on exact parameter identification of the unknown parameters. Instead it may continuously update itself to cancel the effect of the flexible modes by been able to identify the effect of the modal dynamics on the performance of the system.