Coordinated Multi-Valve Disturbance-Rejection Pressure Control for High-Altitude Test Stands via Exterior Penalty Functions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel coordinated disturbance rejection control scheme for high-altitude test stands, improving pressure regulation and valve stability through an external penalty function and distributed control framework.

Contribution

It develops a new coordinated ADRC method with an external penalty function for dynamic constraint handling, ensuring stability and superior disturbance rejection in multi-valve systems.

Findings

Maximum pressure error reduced by 77.1% compared to PID control

Valve oscillations decreased by 81.5% under flow disturbance

Global convergence of the optimization algorithm is rigorously proven

Abstract

High altitude simulation test benches for aero engines employ multi chamber, multi valve intake systems that demand effective decoupling and strong disturbance rejection during transient tests. This paper proposes a coordinated active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) scheme based on an external penalty function. The chamber pressure safety limit is reformulated as an inequality constrained optimization problem, and an exponential penalty together with a gradient based algorithm is designed for dynamic constraint relaxation, with global convergence rigorously proven. A coordination term is then integrated into a distributed ADRC framework to yield a multi valve coordinated LADRC controller, whose asymptotic stability is established via Lyapunov theory. Hardware in the loop simulations using MATLAB/Simulink and a PLC demonstrate that, under $\pm$3 kPa pressure constraints, chamber V2's maximum error is 1.782 kPa (77.1\% lower than PID control), and under a 180 kg/s^2 flow rate disturbance, valve oscillations decrease from $\pm$27\% to $\pm$5\% (an 81.5\% reduction). These results confirm the proposed method's superior disturbance rejection and decoupling performance.