Temperature trajectory control of cryogenic wind tunnel with robust L1 adaptive control

Abstract

Temperature control in a cryogenic wind tunnel is the key to realizing finely controlled Reynolds number close to true flight. This study deploys the L1 adaptive control methodology to ensure the total temperature profile of the cryogenic wind tunnel tracks a specified reference trajectory. After introducing a non-linear model of a cryogenic wind tunnel and a linear temperature model, a linear–quadratic–Gaussian (LQG) controller is implemented as the baseline controller. The L1 adaptive controller with piecewise constant adaptive law is used as an augmentation to the baseline controller to cancel the matched and unmatched uncertainties within the actuator’s bandwidth. By introducing two modifications to the standard L1 adaptive controller, which are the transportation delay modelling in the state predictor and the non-linear state dependent filter, the L1 adaptive controller improves the performance of the baseline controller in the presence of uncertainties in temperature control, guaranteeing proper stability and delay margin. The simulation results and analysis demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control architecture. The main contribution of this paper lies in the first applications of L1 adaptive control to the wind tunnel control problem and the non-linear state dependent filter in L1 adaptive control structure.