Switched linear control for refrigerant superheat recovery in vapor compression systems

Herschel C. Pangborn, Andrew G. Alleyne

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Extended durations of liquid refrigerant ingestion by the compressor of a vapor compression system (VCS) can lead to damage or failure of this component. While this can be prevented by inserting an accumulator between the evaporator and compressor, this addition of hardware may be undesirable for applications in which the weight or size of the thermal management system is critical. As an alternative, this paper proposes a switched Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) design to quickly recover the presence of a superheated phase at the exit of the evaporator using feedback control. Stability analysis of the closed-loop switched system is presented, and application of the control approach in both simulation and on an experimental VCS testbed demonstrate the success of the control design.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)142-156
Number of pages15
JournalControl Engineering Practice
Volume57
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2016
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant Number DGE-1144245 and by the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Power Optimization of Electro Thermal Systems (POETS) with cooperative agreement EEC-1449548 .

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords

  • Superheat recovery
  • Switched linear control
  • Vapor compression system

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