Boundary control of nonlinear coupled heat systems using backstepping

A state feedback boundary controller is designed for a 2D coupled PDE system modelling heat transfer in a membrane distillation system for water desalination. Fluid is separated into two compartments with nonlinear coupling at a membrane boundary. The controller sets the temperature on one boundary in order to track a temperature difference across the membrane boundary. The control objective is achieved by an extension of backstepping methods to these coupled equations. Stability of the target system via Lyapunov like methods, and the invertibility of the integral transformation are used to show the stability of the tracking error.