Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on Aug. 27, 2009). "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Control, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-162). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006. / Shapiro, Alexander, Committee Member ; Vidakovic, Brani, Committee Member ; Ume, Charles, Committee Member ; Sadegh, Nader, Committee Chair ; Liang, Steven, Committee Member. Vita.

Dissertation (Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering) Naval Postgraduate School, December 1994. / "December 1994." Dissertation supervisor(s): Charles W. Therrien. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2006. / Principal faculty advisor: Kenneth E. Barner, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-160).

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Electrical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology / In the past decade, the need for flexibility and reconfigurability in automation has contributed to the rise of the distributed concept in control systems engineering. The IEC 61499 standard is used to define a distributed model for dividing various components of an industrial application in automation process and complicated control of machinery into function blocks. Such function blocks have the flexibility to be distributed and interconnected across a number of controllers. However, this new standard for automation faces two main challenges: the complexity in designs of distributed systems and the lack of utilization of the standard in industry. Most applications of controllers based on functional block programming are for linear systems. As most of industrial processes are nonlinear there is a need to extend the functional block approach for implementation of nonlinear controllers. Design complexity involves the exact modeling of the system in function blocks to obtain its accurate behaviour and the lack of utilization of the standard is understandable because new technologies are not easily accepted in industry due to their high prices and risks of compromising the performance at the production level. The thesis describes a methodology for design and implementation of nonlinear controllers for nonlinear plants in IEC 61499 standard compliant real-time environment of TwinCAT 3 and Beckhoff Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). The first step is to design the nonlinear controllers and simulate the closed-loop system in MATLAB/SIMULINK software. Then the new engineering based concepts to transform the obtained closed-loop system model to an IEC 61499 Function Block Model. This is accomplished by applying one method which involves a complete model transformation between two block-diagram languages: Simulink and TwinCAT 3. The development tools that support the transformation algorithm in the thesis sets the foundation stone of the verification and validation structure for IEC 61499 function blocks approach. The transformed model of the closed-loop system is downloaded to the Beckhoff PLC and is simulated in real-time. The obtained results demonstrate that the developed methodology allows complex nonlinear controllers to be successfully transformed to IEC 61499 standard compliant environment and to be applied for real-time PLC control of complex plants.

This dissertation introduces the Explicit Reference Governor: a simple and systematic add-on control unit that provides constraint handling capabilities to any pre-stabilized nonlinear system by suitably manipulating its applied reference. The main innovation of the proposed framework is that constraint satisfaction is ensured without having to solve implicit equations. As a result, the Explicit Reference Governor is particularly well suited for applications with limited computational capabilities. The basic idea behind the scheme consists in manipulating the derivative of the applied reference so that, at any given time instant, the currently applied reference will not cause a violation of constraints anytime in the future. The theory behind the proposed framework is presented in general terms and is then detailed to provide specific design strategies. Possible extensions to ensure robustness are also proposed. In addition to introducing the general theory of the Explicit Reference Governor, the dissertation illustrates its step-by-step implementation on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Control design for nonlinear systems remains an open problem in control theory despite the recent increase in research attention. This PhD work is motivated by this fact, addressing the constructive observer design approach, the output regulation problem, minimum entropy control, fault tolerant control (FTC), and iterative FTC for nonlinear systems.