Hybrid decentralized maximum entropy control for large-scale dynamical systems

In the analysis of complex, large-scale dynamical systems it is often essential to decompose the overall dynamical system into a collection of interacting subsystems. Because of implementation constraints, cost, and reliability considerations, a decentralized controller architecture is often required for controlling large-scale interconnected dynamical systems. In this paper, a novel class of fixed-order, energy-based hybrid decentralized controllers is proposed as a means for achieving enhanced energy dissipation in large-scale lossless and dissipative dynamical systems. These dynamic decentralized controllers combine a logical switching architecture with continuous dynamics to guarantee that the system plant energy is strictly decreasing across switchings. The general framework leads to hybrid closed-loop systems described by impulsive differential equations. In addition, we construct hybrid dynamic controllers that guarantee that each subsystem-subcontroller pair of the hybrid closed-loop system is consistent with basic thermodynamic principles. Special cases of energy-based hybrid controllers involving state-dependent switching are described, and an illustrative combustion control example is given to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.