Robust bilinear tracking control of a parabolic trough solar collector via saturation

This paper investigates the problem of robust tracking control of heat transport in a Parabolic Trough Solar Collector (PTSC), where the output has to track a desired reference trajectory. In this work, the PTSC is modeled by state-space bilinear dynamics. The manipulated variable is the pump volumetric flow rate, and the source term, i.e., solar irradiance, is assumed to be unmeasured. In addition, the actuator’s physical constraints induce saturation bounds on the manipulated variable and need to be considered explicitly in the controller design. To deal with these challenges, we first propose a saturated state-feedback law that meets the control objectives. Then, we reconstruct the unknown time-varying source term using an adaptive estimator. Later, through Lyapunov stability analysis, we prove that the closed-loop system and the output tracking error are uniformly ultimately stable. Numerical simulations attest to the performance of the proposed control strategy.