MODELLING AND PI CONTROL OF AN IRRIGATION CANAL

The main goal of this paper is to expose and validate a method-ology to design efficient automatic controllers for irrigation canals, based on the Saint-Venant model. This model-based methodology enables to design controllers at the design stage (when the canal is not already built). The methodology is ap-plied on an experimental canal located in Portugal. First the full nonlinear PDE model is calibrated, using a single steady-state experiment. The model is then linearized around a functioning point, in order to design linear PI controllers. Two classical control strategies are tested (local upstream control and distant downstream control) and compared on the canal. The experi-mental results shows the effectiveness of the method.