Modeling and Control of a Special Type of Open Channel Flow

In this paper, we present an effective control strategy for special type of open channel flow problems. The problem definition for this investigation is due to an electric supply company which makes use of a canal to store water during slack periods in order to use this stored water to cover load peaks. The mathematical model of the system is derived in such a way that it is on the one hand an exact description of the dynamic behavior of the system and on the other hand it is not too complicated for the controller design. The control loop consists of a nonlinear controller, a feed forward disturbance compensation and a tracking controller which guarantees zero steady state error. Simulation results show the feasibility of the proposed design.