Design of a fuzzy logic adaptive sliding controller and its application to an air flow/cooling system

The design and implementation of a novel fuzzy logic adaptive variable structure controller to a prototype air flow/cooling system is considered in this paper. The proposed control policy is derived from principles of sliding mode control and fuzzy logic inference. To minimize the distance to the sliding surface the controller produces an input which drives the rate of change of a candidate Lyapunov function to negative values. Through fuzzy logic adaptation of the switching gains the method overcomes the modeling obstacle to control such systems that are governed by partial differential equations subject to complex boundary conditions. The controller is demonstrated by an experimental prototype of plant which emulates the behavior of an electronic component cooling system.