Nonlinear Control of a Laboratory Gas Turbine Engine with Uncertain System Dynamics

A sliding mode control (SMC) design approach is presented in this paper to ensure the robust tracking of a laboratory-based gas turbine engine (GTE) subjected to noise and uncertainties in parameters and disturbances. The design of SMC is defined as the main objective to compute the requirement of fuel flow for the engine such that the shaft speed of the GTE tracks its commanded signal with minimum control effort while adhering to physical constraints. Further, an approximation task of the discontinuous signum function is performed by a saturation function to attenuate the chattering phenomena. The proposed control design is then verified on a validated mathematical model of GTE subjected to uncertainties and noise. The closed-loop GTE responses truly accomplish the superiority of the proposed design approach of SMC control in achieving satisfactory tracking performance of the gas turbine engine.