Phd thesis title: Optimization-based control for constraint handling in AC motors
Abstract: Electrical machines are now ubiquitous in transportation, such as hybrid and electric vehicles, electric aircraft, Industry 4.0, and robotics. Each type of AC motor has its own advantages and drawbacks in terms of maintenance, performance, and control complexity.
Most electric machines are still controlled using classical linear PID strategies. In practice, heuristics are added to handle input saturation and avoid integrator wind-up or other instability issues. For AC motors, saturation mainly appears as voltage limits, while current and speed limits act as state constraints.
Since the 2000s, more rigorous methods have emerged, offering stability guarantees. They typically rely on optimization-based designs that produce Anti-Windup (AWUP) compensators aimed at restoring performance during saturation. A key benefit is that they preserve the nominal PID controller—and thus its well-known industrial advantages—because AWUP schemes are simply added around the existing control architecture.
Keywords: Synchronous machines, Saturation, Anti-windup, Semi-definite programming, Model Predictive Control
Duration: October 2024 – October 2027
Funding: UPSaclay – Université Paris-Saclay
Supervising team: Giorgio Valmorbida (supervisor) & Pedro Rodriguez-Ayerbe (co-supervisor)
