CAREER: Boundary Control Towards Smart Water Management Systems

在水和能源需求不断增长的时代，这项学院早期职业发展(CARAPE)补助金将为控制河流-大坝-水库联合系统提供可行的解决方案。全球变暖正在极大地改变降雨模式，增加缺水的风险。自然景观迅速转变为人口持续增长的城市化地区，进一步加剧了这一问题。可持续管理战略对于确保最佳利用地球上基本但有限的水资源正变得至关重要。通常，修建水坝、水闸和水库等河流基础设施是为了满足人类社会对水和能源的需求。然而，昂贵的工程河流基础设施的维护仍然是与水库沉积和生态系统保护有关的关键问题。首先，将开发评估方法，通过测量闸门位置的适当数量，实时量化和监测水道中输送的沉积物的分布轮廓。其次，将利用由移动泥沙引起的密度梯度连续介质模型控制的液压系统的流量控制策略，以确保在闸门在渠道或水库中释放高流量时稳定运行，从而在冲沙或排沙操作中产生湍流。将设计一个支持控制/估计方法的可行性和效率的实验装置。在通过开发创新的实时控制和评估方法来促进科学研究的同时，研究方案将与引入与研究主题相关的研究生课程的综合教育计划相结合。该项目将为K-12、本科和研究生阶段的学生参与水管理系统的研究和开发创造机会。研究的关键思想是开发偏微分方程(PDE)边界控制技术，以实现有效的水和泥沙动力学管理。为了实现这一目标，将利用反映水沙耦合波动力学的基本平衡方程，即描述具有密度梯度的多相流的双层圣维南模型。要克服的主要困难包括实时监测分布的泥沙床剖面和冲刷过程产生的干扰，如激波和渠道上的大量闸门排放产生的水力跳跃。强耦合非线性双曲型偏微分方程组和由双曲型偏微分方程组和常微分方程组组成的混合系统与流动物理问题有关。结合李亚普诺夫分析的反推控制技术将被用来获得高性能的观测器和控制器，这些观测器和控制器仅使用门的驱动动力学和输出测量来实现在指定设定值的快速和指数稳定。该研究理论成果的各种扩展基本上可以解决与交通动态控制、下水道系统网络和水流中污染物传输相关的决定性挑战，仅举几例。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will provide viable solutions to control combined river-dam-reservoir systems in an era of unceasing growing demand for water and energy. Global warming is drastically altering rainfall patterns, increasing the risk of water scarcity. The rapid conversion of natural landscapes to urbanized areas that are continually growing in population further accentuates this issue. Sustainable management strategies are becoming critical to ensure the optimum use of essential but limited water resources on the planet. Often, river infrastructures such as dams, gates, and reservoirs are built to satisfy human societies' water and energy demands. However, the maintenance of costly engineered river infrastructures is still posing crucial problems related to reservoir sedimentation and ecosystem preservation. First, estimation methodologies that allow real-time quantification and monitoring of distributed profiles of sediments transported in a water channel from the measurement of appropriate quantities at gate locations will be developed. Second, flow control strategies for hydraulic systems governed by continuum models of density gradient induced by moving sediment will be exploited to ensure stable operation when gates release high discharges in the channel or reservoir, generating turbulence during sediment flushing or venting operations. An experimental setup that supports the feasibility and efficiency of the control/estimation methodologies will be designed. While advancing the science through the development of innovative real-time control and estimation approaches, the research program will be consolidated with an integrated educational plan with the introduction of a graduate course related to the research topic. This project will create opportunities for the participation of students in research and development in water management systems at the K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels.The key idea of the research is to exploit PDE (Partial Differential Equation) boundary control techniques towards efficient water and sediment dynamics management. Fundamental balance equations reflecting the dynamics of coupled water and sediment waves, namely, the bilayer Saint-Venant model, which describes a multiphase flow with a density gradient, will be exploited to achieve the objective. The main difficulties to overcome involve the real-time monitoring of distributed sediment bed profiles and disturbances arising from flushing processes such as shock-waves and hydraulic jumps generated by significant gate discharges over channels. Strongly coupled nonlinear hyperbolic PDEs and mixed systems consisting of cascading hyperbolic PDEs and ODE (Ordinary Differential Equations) are relevant to the flow physics problems. The backstepping control technique combined with Lyapunov analysis will be employed to derive high-performance observers and controllers that solely use gate actuation dynamics and output measurements to enable fast and exponential stabilization at a prescribed setpoint. Various extensions of the theoretical outcomes of the research can essentially solve decisive challenges related to the control of traffic dynamics, networks of sewer systems, and pollutant transport in water flow, to name a few.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.