Optimal Control and Model Reduction of Nonlinear DAE Models

Abstract: In this thesis, different topics for models that consist of both differential and algebraic equations are studied. The interest in such models, denoted DAE models, have increased substantially during the last years. One of the major reasons is that several modern object-oriented modeling tools used to model large physical systems yield models in this form. The DAE models will, at least locally, be assumed to be described by a decoupled set of ordinary differential equations and purely algebraic equations. In theory, this assumption is not very restrictive because index reduction techniques can be used to rewrite rather general DAE models to satisfy this assumption.One of the topics considered in this thesis is optimal feedback control. For state-space models, it is well-known that the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation (HJB) can be used to calculate the optimal solution. For DAE models, a similar result exists where a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman-like equation is solved. This equation has an extra term in order to incorporate the algebraic equations, and it is investigated how the extra term must be chosen in order to obtain the same solution from the different equations.A problem when using the HJB to find the optimal feedback law is that it involves solving a nonlinear partial differential equation. Often, this equation cannot be solved explicitly. An easier problem is to compute a locally optimal feedback law. For analytic nonlinear time-invariant state-space models, this problem was solved in the 1960's, and in the 1970's the time-varying case was solved as well. In both cases, the optimal solution is described by convergent power series. In this thesis, both of these results are extended to analytic DAE models.Usually, the power series solution of the optimal feedback control problem consists of an infinite number of terms. In practice, an approximation with a finite number of terms is used. A problem is that for certain problems, the region in which the approximate solution is accurate may be small. Therefore, another parametrization of the optimal solution, namely rational functions, is studied. It is shown that for some problems, this parametrization gives a substantially better result than the power series approximation in terms of approximating the optimal cost over a larger region.A problem with the power series method is that the computational complexity grows rapidly both in the number of states and in the order of approximation. However, for DAE models where the underlying state-space model is control-affine, the computations can be simplified. Therefore, conditions under which this property holds are derived.Another major topic considered is how to include stochastic processes in nonlinear DAE models. Stochastic processes are used to model uncertainties and noise in physical processes, and are often an important part in for example state estimation. Therefore, conditions are presented under which noise can be introduced in a DAE model such that it becomes well-posed. For well-posed models, it is then discussed how particle filters can be implemented for estimating the time-varying variables in the model.The final topic in the thesis is model reduction of nonlinear DAE models. The objective with model reduction is to reduce the number of states, while not affecting the input-output behavior too much. Three different approaches are studied, namely balanced truncation, balanced truncation using minimization of the co-observability function and balanced residualization. To compute the reduced model for the different approaches, a method originally derived for nonlinear state-space models is extended to DAE models.