Process operating mode monitoring: switching online the right controller

The paper presents a structure which deals with process operating mode monitoring and allows control law reconfiguration by switching online the right controller. After a short review of the advances in switching based control systems during the last decade (1991-2001), we introduce our approach based on the definition of the operating modes of a plant. The control reconfiguration strategy is achieved by online selection of an adequate controller, in a case of active accommodation. The main contribution lies in settling up the design steps of the multicontroller structure and its accurate integration in the operating mode detection and accommodation loop. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the operating mode detection and accommodation (OMDA) structure for which the design steps propose a method to study the asymptotic stability, switching performance improvement, and the tuning of the multimodel based detector.