Control Configuration Selection for Multivariable Nonlinear Systems

Control configuration selection is the procedure of choosing the appropriate input and output pairs for the design of SISO (or block) controllers. This step is an important prerequisite for a successful industrial control strategy. In industrial practices, it is often the case that systems, which are needed to be controlled, are nonlinear, and linear models are insufficient to describe the behavior of the processes. The focus of this work is on the problem of control configuration selection for such systems. A gramian-based interaction measure for control configuration selection of MIMO nonlinear processes is described. In general, most of the results on the control configuration selection, which have been proposed so far, can only support linear systems. The proposed gramian-based interaction measure not only supports nonlinear processes but also can be used to propose a richer sparse or block diagonal controller structure. The interaction measure is used for control configuration selection of the nonlinear quadruple-tank process