A heuristic approach to the hierarchical control of multivariable serially connected dynamical systems

Abstract

A heuristic approach is developed for the control of serially connected dynamical systems with and without time delays between the subsystems. The approach enables near optimal control to be achieved and has particularly modest computational requirements. This is illustrated in a number of examples where the overall optimal and the heuristic strategy are compared by digital simulation. Finally, a method is developed for calculating bounds on the suboptimality of the strategy and a numerical example illustrates the approach.