Robust ventilation control for building HVAC performance optimization

16th Triennial World Congress of International Federation of Automatic Control, IFAC 2005, Prague, 3-8 July 2005Optimal building ventilation control is achieved combining demand controlled ventilation (DCV) and economizer control. The control instability during the transition processes between different control modes is among the major difficulties faced when combining DCV control with economizer control in applications. A robust control strategy, using "freezing", gain scheduling, I-term reset and feedback transition control for different transition processes, is developed addressing the instability problems. The significant energy benefit of using economizer control can be achieved as indicated by over one year's comparison tests on two air-handling units (AHUs) in a building.Department of Building Services EngineeringRefereed conference pape