SINTEF AUTOMATIC CONTROL

Head : Peter Singstad

ANNUAL REPORT 1995

The SINTEF department of Automatic control is part of SINTEF Electronics and Cybernetics. The PROST group consists of the following persons:

• Research Scientist Tor Steinar Schei
• Research Scientist Tor Ivar Eikaas
• Research Scientist Ivar Halvorsen
• Research Scientist Tor Arne Johansen
• Research Scientist Håvard Nordhus
• Research Scientist Per Eilif Wahl
• Research Scientist Hans Berntsen
• Research Scientist Kjell Støle Hansen

Research projects

Control of polyolefin reactors

Nonlinear model based control systems have been developed and implemented on several types of reactors within BOREALIS (in Norway, Belgium and Finland). The control systems include basic control systems for stabilisation of reactor dynamics as well as supervisory control systems and systems for control of product qualities.

Heidrun control system tuning

The process control system for the Heidrun platform was tuned in advance of oil production start up. The tuning was performed on a combined engineering and training simulator previously developed at SINTEF. The tuning tool "MultiTune", which is also developed at SINTEF, was used for computation of controller parameters.

MultiTune: Tool for tuning of conventional control systems

MultiTune is a software tool for automatic tuning of conventional industrial process control systems consisting of PID controllers in single loops and cascades and simple feedforward and decoupling transfer functions

ORBIT (Operating Regime Based Modelling and Identification Toolbox)

ORBIT is a MATLAB based software tool for computer aided grey box modelling and parameter estimation developed by SINTEF and NTNU. The model representation is based on multiple local models. ORBIT is currently being applied in a research project for Daimler- Benz.

CADAS: A tool for computer aided design, analysis & simulation of process plants

The development of CADAS, which was done in cooperation between Simrad, SINTEF, Statoil, Hydro, Aker and Kværner, was finished in 1995.

ESPRIT project Kactus

The activities at SINTEF is concerned with the development of an ontology for modelling of offshore oil and gas processing plants. An application for automatic generation of computer based operational procedures based on this ontology is currently being developed.

PROMAX: On-line decentralised estimation

Methods for on-line decentralised estimation in industrial processes were developed for Statoil.

GENEST: On-line estimation

A software module for on-line state and parameter estimation was developed in an internal strategic project. GENEST is used for the estimation part of a Nonlinear Model Predictive Controller currently being developed at SINTEF.

Publications

• B. A. Foss, T. A. Johansen, Aa. V. Sørensen «Nonlinear predictive control using local models - applied to a batch fermentation process``, Control Engineering Practice, Vol. 3, pages 389-396, 1995.
• T. A. Johansen and B. A. Foss, «Identification of non-linear System Structure and Parameters using Regime Decomposition», Automatica, Vol. 31, pp. 321-326, 1995.
• T. A. Johansen and B. A. Foss, «Semi-Empirical Modeling of Non-linear Dynamic Systems based on Identification of Operating Regimes and Local Models», in «Neural Network Engineering in Dynamic Control Systems», K. Hunt , G. Irwin and K. Warwick (Eds), Springer-Verlag, London, pp. 105-126, 1995.
• B. A. Foss and T. A. Johansen, «Local Modeling as a tool for semi-empirical and semi- mechanistic process modeling», in «Neural Networks for Chemical Engineers», A. B. Bulsari (Ed), Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 297-334, 1995.
• T. S. Schei, "A finite-difference approach to linearization in nonlinear estimation algorithms," Proc. American Control Conference, 1995.

Courses

Course at NTNU: "Kostnadseffektiv drift - avansert regulering med prosess- datasystemer" was lectured by professors at NTNU and several SINTEF researchers.