A multiple linear modeling approach for

nonlinear switched systems

Hariprasad K, Sharad Bhartiya, Ravindra D. Gudi
Department of Chemical Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, Mumbai - 400 076 India
Abstract: Many applications in chemical engineering exhibit a switching character due to
discrete and continuous aspects in their dynamic behavior. While rst principles models of such
systems can be constructed with process simulators, they are usually too complex for use in on
line applications such as in model based control. The available methods for modeling of such
systems mostly use linear models, such as Mixed Logic Dynamical Systems (MLD) and Piece
Wise Ane (PWA) models which describe the evolution of states in each discrete mode using
linear equations. Here, we present a modeling strategy for nonlinear switched systems, which is
well suited for on-line applications. The method involves a trajectory based linearization and
employs a model bank with a set of local linear models for each discrete operational mode. The
model bank is generated by linearizing the rst principles model across a carefully designed
trajectory based on its capability of multi-step ahead prediction. The numerous models are
clustered and representative models are selected based on the gap metric as the distance measure.
The selected linear models are aggregated using Bayesian or Fuzzy approaches to obtain the
global model for the nonlinear switched system. A simulation case study of spherical two tank
system is presented to validate proposed modeling strategy.
Keywords: Switched systems, Trajectory linearization, Gap metric, model clustering, Fuzzy
approach for multiple model, Bayesian approach for multiple model
1. INTRODUCTION
Switched systems represent a class of hybrid dynamical
systems wherein all discrete events switch the evolution
of continuous states from one operating mode to another
(Liberzon, 2003), and are described by a combination of
dierential equations for the continuous states and logic
conditions for the switching events. Chemical processes
also exhibit switching behavior due to the interplay be-
tween various continuous and discrete variables. Examples
include start-ups/shut-downs, product or feed stock grade
transitions and manipulation of on/o valves. Moreover,
current industrial trends promote logical decision making
along with continuously driven control laws to accommo-
date greater level of exible processing such as in fault
tolerant control.
Model based applications such as model predictive control
(MPC) and fault diagnosis, in context of switched dynamic
systems, require a process model which describes the evo-
lution of the states while transiting from one operating
mode to another. Use of rst principles models of switched
systems in MPC requires an on line solution of a general
Mixed Integer Nonlinear Program (MINLP) in a fraction
of sampling period, which is impractical. An alternate ap-
proach consists of developing simpler approximate control-
relevant models that capture both the switching behavior

Corresponding Author: bhartiya@che.iitb.ac.in (Sharad Bhar-

tiya),Tel: +91 22 25767225.
This work was supported by Department of Science and Technology
(DST), India Project code: 09DST010
as well as nonlinear dynamics, which are more suitable for
model based control. Such control-relevant models could
be developed either from the rst principles nonlinear
models themselves along with switching rules or directly
identied from data. Most modeling formalisms are based
on linear dynamics along with the switching logic. These
include Piecewise Ane Systems (PWA) (Sontag, 1996),
Mixed Logical Dynamics Systems (MLD) (Bemporad and
Morari, 1999) etc. However, a linear model such as the
MLD model may be too simple to capture the nonlinear
behavior. To address this issue, Nandola and Bhartiya
(Nandola and Bhartiya, 2008), extended the well-known
multiple modeling framework (Smith and Johansen, 1997)
to represent nonlinear hybrid dynamical systems. It con-
sists of using various local linear models across the hy-
brid state space and subsequently aggregating them using
model validity measures to obtain model predictions. How-
ever, no guidelines were provided for selection of the local
regions of the state space where individual models should
be obtained and simple heuristics were used. The present
work addresses this gap, which must be overcome for a
successful implementation of the multiple model approach
for control of nonlinear switched systems. In particular, we
propose a systematic method to obtain linear models that
span over all discrete modes of interest as well as represent
the nonlinear input-state space map in each mode with
reasonable accuracy.
The paper is organized as follows: section 2 briey reviews
the multiple modeling of switched systems; section 3 and
section 4 present generation of a bank of linear models
8th IFAC Symposium on Advanced Control of Chemical Processes
The International Federation of Automatic Control
Singapore, July 10-13, 2012
978-3-902823-05-2/12/$20.00 2012 IFAC 63 10.3182/20120710-4-SG-2026.00030
using a bounded error notion and a clustering based se-
lection of a representative models from the model bank,
respectively; section 5 presents Fuzzy based model aggre-
gation approach. Section 6 reports an simulation study the
proposed multiple modeling strategy on a spherical two
tank system.
2. MULTIPLE MODEL REPRESENTATION OF
SWITCHED SYSTEMS
Consider the evolution of the switched system in the j
th
operating mode M
j
(Liberzon, 2003):
x = f
j
(x, u), j J
y = g(x)
(1)
where x R
n
represent continuous states, y R
p
the
outputs, u R
m
continuous inputs, and j J represents
the mode of operation M
j
. For each j J, the nonlinear
function f
j
is assumed to be locally Lipschitz and solvable
in R
n
in the sense of Caratheodory. Switching triggers a
transition from the existing mode M
j
to a new mode M
j

and could be autonomous or controlled. In autonomous

switching, the transition occurs due to discontinuity in the
continuous states while, in contrast, controlled switching is
imposed by discrete inputs on the system to achieve certain
characteristics such as opening or closing of a solenoid
valve. Controlled switching can be imposed by external
intervention or internally by means of controller synthesis
(Liberzon, 2003).
In chemical process systems, events may be states-driven
(State Events (SE)) or inputs-driven (Control Events
(CE)). For example, rise in the pressure (p(t)) of a boiler
above a threshold (p
thr
) results in triggering of the pres-
sure relief valve. Thus, the zero-crossing of the function
s
i
(t) p(t) p
thr
from below results in occurrence of a
state event. Likewise the mode of operation of the switched
system can be identied by the sign of all such such
event-generating functions s
i
, i = 1, . . . , N

, which are
typically linear. A binary indicator variable w
i
(t) {0, 1}
is assigned to each of the N

event-generating function,
whose value captures the sign of s
j
. Thus,
s
i
(t) a
T
i
x(t)+b
T
i
u(t)c
i
0 (
i
(t) = 1), i = 1, . . . , N (2)
where a
i
, b
i
and c
i
are the coecients that relate state
and inputs of the i
th
event-generating function s
i
. The
status of of all event-generating functions, represented by
(t) = [
1
(t),
2
(t), . . . ,
N
(t)], uniquely captures the
mode of the system. Note that (t) can represent at most
2
N
, modes M
j
, j = 1, . . . , 2
N
. The double implication in
eq.(2) can be reformulated in terms of Big-M and Small-
m constraints (Williams, 1993) and expressed in a vector
matrix form as:
E
1
u(t) +E
2
(t) +E
3
x(t) E
4
(3)
where E
i
(i = 1, 2, 3, 4) are coecient matrices of appro-
priate size. For well-posed systems the binary indicator
variables, (t) and hence the operating mode is uniquely
determined from eq. (3). We dene a mode indicator func-
tion
j
((t)) to dene mode M
j
such that

j
((t)) =
_
1, if (t) =
j
0, if (t) =
j
(4)
where
j
corresponds to the value of binary variables

i
, i = 1, . . . , N

which represent mode j, M

j
.
To obtain a single global model valid for all switching
modes, eq.(1) can be parameterized with the indicator
variable as follows:
x = f(x, u, )
E
1
u(t) +E
2
(t) +E
3
x(t) E
4
(5)
As discussed previously, use of a general nonlinear rst
principles models such as in eq.(5) for MPC is impractical.
The remainder of this paper discusses a systematic ap-
proach to obtain multiple model representation of eq.(5).
Multiple model approximation has been extensively used
for the modeling and model based control of continuous
state, nonlinear systems (Smith and Johansen, 1997). The
basic idea is to use a number of linear models to ade-
quately represent the nonlinear space. Nandola and Bhar-
tiya (Nandola and Bhartiya, 2008) proposed a multiple
model approach to describe nonlinear hybrid dynamical
systems (NHDS). Here, multiple linear models, aggregated
by a Bayesian approach, were used to represent the nonlin-
ear dynamics in each mode of the hybrid system. However,
no attempt was made to determine (i) how many linear
models should be used in model aggregation and (ii) the
region of the hybrid state space trajectory at which these
should be valid. Both these factors play a crucial role in
determining the accuracy of the multiple model scheme.
This work is an attempt to address these key issues
by proposing a generalized methodology for modeling
of nonlinear switched systems. Our proposed approach
combines various elements of systems theory and articial
intelligence to arrive at a useful modeling paradigm for
nonlinear switched systems and consists of the following
of steps:
Step 1. Generate a set of linear models with a bounded
error criteria over a pre-designed trajectory that pass
through all the modes of operation .
Step 2. Select a subset of models from the model bank
using an operator distance measure. In this work we use
the gap metric.
Step 3. Aggregate the selected models with fuzzy and
Bayesian approach ensuring smooth transition between
the models.
The subsequent sections discuss and illustrate these steps
in detail.
3. STEP 1: A TRAJECTORY BASED
DEVELOPMENT OF LINEAR MODELS
Here, we assume that a rst principles model of the system
of the form of eq.(5) is available. It is also assumed that
all states are available and reachable with sucient dwell
time. For a chemical process, the operating trajectory is
characterized by states and inputs history (x
0:N
, u
0:N
)
and can be determined based on the inputs of experts
like engineers/operators who are familiar with the actual
operational prole. If the trajectory never passes through
some of the operating modes we need not generate the
linear models corresponding to those modes.
We assume that at sample instant k, a linear model
generated by linearizing at a local operating point
i
in
mode M
j
, of the following form is available:
8th IFAC Symposium on Advanced Control of Chemical Processes
Singapore, July 10-13, 2012
64
x
k+1
=

i
(M
j
)
x
k
+

i
(M
j
)
u
k
+f

i
(M
j
)
(6)
E
1,
i
(M
j
)
u
k
+E
2,
i
(M
j
)

i
+E
3,
i
(M
j
)
x
k
E
4,
i
(M
j
)
(7)
where
i(Mj)
and
i(Mj)
are the state transition matrix
and input-state matrix respectively, f
i(Mj)
is the ane
term. Here
i
(M
j
) = (x
i
x
0:N
, u
i
u
0:N
), identies the
i
th
operating point in the j
th
mode of the switched system
at which the model is available. For simplicity, this model
will be represented by an object as follows: M
i(Mj)
.
M

i
(M
j
)
= {

i
(M
j
)
,

i
(M
j
)
, f

i
(M
j
)
, E
1,
i
(M
j
)
, E
2,
i
(M
j
)
,
E
3,
i
(M
j
)
, E
4,
i
(M
j
)
}
(8)
Such a model may be obtained by linearizing eq.(5) at

i
(M
j
). Since the linear model M
i(Mj)
corresponds to
the point
i
(M
j
) of linearization on the input-state tra-
jectory of eq.(5), the linear model model predictions may
be written as:
x
k+1/
i
(M
j
)
=

i
(M
j
)
x
k/
i
(M
j
)
+

i
(M
j
)
u
k
+f

i
(M
j
)
(9)
E
1,
i
(M
j
)
u
k
+E
2,
i
(M
j
)

i
+E
3,
i
(M
j
)
x
k/
i
(M
j
)
E
4,
i
(M
j
)
(10)
where x
k+1/i(Mj)
represents the prediction at (k + 1)
instant using the model M
i(Mj )
. Since the intended use
of the linear model M
i(Mj)
is long range predictions in
MPC, it is deemed accurate if the p step ahead prediction
error is less than a threshold
thr
. Thus, a new linear model
M
i+1(Mj )
is generated by linearization (Reweinski and
White, 2003), if the prediction error exceeds
thr
x
k+p/i(Mj)
x
k+p

thr
(11)
Note that x
k+p
x
0:N
represents the rst principles
model prediction eq.(5). We assume that total number of
models generated in mode M
j
is N
Mj
. To ensure each
mode has a distinct set of models, a new model M
i(Mj+1)
is generated once the trajectory encounters a new mode
M
j+1
, regardless of the error criteria in eq.(11). At the
end of the trajectory based model generation step a total
of

NM
j=1
N
Mj
are available, where N
M
represents the total
number of modes visited by the trajectory. Clearly, N
Mj
depends on the error bound
thr
. A small
thr
results in
too many models and a large
thr
lead to too few.
4. STEP 2 : A GAP METRIC BASED CLUSTERING
TO OBTAIN A REDUCED SET OF MODELS
The gap Metric (GM) measures the distance between two
linear operator and was rst developed to study the robust
stability of feedback systems . We consider each model in
the j
th
mode M
i(Mj)
, i = 1, . . . , N
Mj
as a linear operator
in Hilbert space . The domain of M
i(Mj)
is dened as
D(M
i(Mj)
) = {u/(M
i(Mj)
u) H} where u is the model
input (El-Sakkary, 1985). If the range R(M
i(Mj )
u) is
represented by output y, then the graph of the operator
M
i(Mj )
is given by G(M
i(Mj)
) = {(u, y)/M
i(Mj)
:
u y, u D(M
i(Mj)
)}. The gap metric between two
closed operators M
i(Mj)
, and M

i
(Mj)
is dened as :
Table 1. Gap Matrix of of the 5 models in the
example to illustrate
models 1 2 3 4 5
1 0 0.03 0.66 0.80 0.80
2 0.03 0 0.64 0.78 0.79
3 0.66 0.64 0 0.21 0.22
4 0.80 0.78 0.21 0 0.01
5 0.80 0.79 0.22 0.22 0
(M

i
(M
j
)
, M

(M
j
)
) (G(M

i
(M
j
)
), G(M

(M
j
)
)),
where (G(M

i
(M
j
)
), G(M

(M
j
)
))
max {

(G(M

i
(M
j
)
), G(M

(M
j
)
)),

(G(M

(M
j
)
, G(M

i
(M
j
)
))},
and

(G(M

i
(M
j
)
), G(M

(M
j
)
)) =
sup
uD(G(M

i
(M
j
)
),u=0
inf
u

D(M

(M
j
)
),u

=0
_
u u

2
+ y y

2
_
u
2
+ y
2
_
(12)

(G(M

i
(Mj)
), G(M
i(Mj )
)) is dened similarly.
Gap metric, which lies between 0 and 1 is preferred
to distance based metric norms for nding the distance
between models (El-Sakkary, 1985). In this study we use
the gap command in MATLABs synthesis toolbox to
compute the gap metric.
4.1 A clustering approach to select representative models
It has been shown that use of a large number of models in
a multiple modeling approach deteriorate models accuracy
(Li and Shalom, 1996). Thus the number of models used
must be chosen judiciously. In this work, the number of
models used for prediction is based on a clustering algo-
rithm such as k-means which uses the GM as a distance
measure. Subsequently, a single cluster representative from
each cluster is selected for making model prediction. The
number of model clusters in each mode may be determined
by the cluster validity measures. The model closest to the
centroid of each cluster can then be selected as the cluster
representative models M
cj
(k)
, i = 1, . . . , N
cj
, where N
cj
,
represents the total number of total number of clusters
in mode M
j
. For the lower dimensional case studies con-
sidered in this work we used a simple heuristic that the
distance between any two models belonging to two distinct
clusters is greater than a user specied threshold
gap
. As
an example let us assume that 5 models were generated to
describe the trajectory in an operating mode. The distance
between each model in gap metric sense is tabulated in
Table (1). Assume that
gap
= 0.4 is prescribed. Model
1 and Model 2 are similar in their gap metric sense. But
Model 1 and Model 3 are not adjacent since the gap metric
value between then is greater than
gap
= 0.4. Similarly
model 3 and 4, Model 3 and 5 are also close. Thus, the
rst model cluster contains model 1 and 2, second cluster
contains Model 3,4,5. Model 1 and Model 4 from the rst
and second clusters respectively. are selected as cluster rep-
resentative models since they are closest to the centroid.
Finally, the selected cluster representative models need to
be combined to obtain a single mode representative model
for the j
th
mode, M
R
(Mj)
. This step is discussed in section
5.
8th IFAC Symposium on Advanced Control of Chemical Processes
Singapore, July 10-13, 2012
65
5. STEP 3: AGGREGATION OF MODELS
The cluster representative models M
cj
(i)
, i = 1, . . . , N
cj
for the j
th
mode are aggregated to arrive at the mul-
tiple model representation of the switching system. The
superscript c
j
indicate that these models correspond to
the cluster representative in j
th
mode. Numerous ap-
proaches to combine local models to get a mode-wide
model, typically based on model validity measures, have
been presented in the literature (Aufderheide and Be-
quette, 2003; Venkat and Gudi, 2002; Wattamwar et al.,
2010). In this work, we purse two popular schemes: 1)
a prediction error driven Bayesian scheme that assigns
weights to each model; and 2) a fuzzy based method ,
where membership of each cluster representative model
in the j
th
mode M
cj
(i)
, i = 1, . . . , N
cj
is calculated based
on distance in the input-state space (Venkat and Gudi,
2002). In each case, the model prediction within each mode
are weighted sums of the multiple linear models to yield
a mode representative model M
R
j
corresponding to each
mode of switched system. Finally, the models across all
the modes M
R
j
, j = 1, . . . , N
M
are combined using mode
indicator function dened in eq.(4) to yield the global
model. Next, we discuss Bayesian and Fuzzy approach for
model aggregation of models within each mode.
5.1 Fuzzy based aggregation
The cluster representative models M
cj
(i)
, i = 1, . . . , N
cj
for
the j
th
mode obtained after clustering can be combined
as a weighted sum where, the individual model weights
capture their relative predictive capability. In the fuzzy
approach, the distance between the point of linearization

i
(M
j
) of all models M
i(Mj)
in j
th
mode is used to
arrive at the fuzzy membership function of each model.
This is based on the rationale that farther
i
(M
j
) is from
the current operating point
k
, lower its validity and vice
versa. To incorporate dynamic lags and therefore to ensure
directionality, lagged values of inputs and outputs are
appended to current inputs and outputs. Here we use the
following membership function (Venkat and Gudi, 2002):
w
i
j,k
=
_

_
1
Nc
j
l=1
_

k
c
i
(M
j
)

k
c
l
(M
j
)
_ 2
1
,
k
= c
i
(M
j
)
1,
k
= M
i
(13)
where w
i
j,k
is the membership of i
th
selected model
M
i(Mj )
, j = 1, . . . , N
M
, i = 1, . . . , N
cj
at k
th
time in-
stant. is the degree of fuzzication, which is generally
chosen to be 2. Increase or decrease of will have im-
pact on fuzzication due to increase or decrease of over-
lap between membership functions. The fuzzied models
should be defuzzied to get the mode representative model
M
R
j
, j = 1, . . . , N
M
as follows (Venkat and Gudi, 2002):
M
R
j
=
Nc
j
i=1
(w
i
j,k
)

M
i(Mj )
Nc
j
i=1
(w
i
j,k
)

, j = 1, . . . , N
M
, i = 1, . . . , N
cj
(14)
Since all models M
R
j
, j = 1, . . . , N
M
are of the same order,
eq.(14) can be rewritten in a compact form as follows:
Fig. 1. Schematic of modied 2-Tank hybrid system (Till
et al., 2004)
x
k+1/M
R
j
=
j
x
k/M
R
j
+
j
u
k
+f
j
(15)
E
1,j
u
k
+E
2,j

j
+E
3,j
x
k/m
R
j
E
4,j
(16)
where
j
=
Nc
j

i=1
(w
i
j,k
)
c
i
(M
j
)
,
j
=
Nc
j

i=1
(w
i
j,k
)
c
i
(M
j
)
,
f
j
=
Nc
j

i=1
(w
i
j,k
)f
c
i
(M
j
)
where the over bar indicates weighted sum of the matrices
corresponding to the cluster representative models of mode
j. Eq.(14) can be rewritten by replacing the model with its
corresponding state space matrices and an equation similar
to eq.(15)can be obtained.
Calculation of weights in the Bayesian framework is pro-
vided in refs. Aufderheide and Bequette (2003); Nandola
and Bhartiya (2008) and is omitted here for brevity.
5.2 Aggregation of representative models across modes
The previous step yields a single model of the form of
eq.(15) which is representative of a specic mode. To ob-
tain a global model across all modes of the switched system
as in eq.(5) the mode representative models M
R
j
, j =
1, . . . , N
M
are combined with the help on the mode in-
dicator functions dened in eq.(4), as follows:
x
k+1
= (
k
)x
k
+ (
k
)u
k
+
k
f (17)

k
E
1
u
k
+
k
E
2
x
k
+
k
E
3

k

k
E
4
(18)
where

k
=
_

1
((k))

2
((k)) . . .

N
M
((k))

,
=
_

1

2
. . .
N
M

, =
_

1

2
. . .
N
M

,
f =
_
f
1
f
2
. . . f
N
M

, E
i
=
_
E
i,1
E
i,2
. . . E
i,N
M

, i = 1, 2, 3, 4
(19)
Eqs. (17-18) represent the multiple model representation
for all the relevant modes can be used an approximation
of the nonlinear model of the a nonlinear switched system
as in eq.(5).
6. SPHERICAL TWO TANK HYBRID SYSTEM: A
CASE STUDY
We demonstrate the trajectory based linear model gener-
ation with bounded error approach on a spherical hybrid
two tank system system, which has been adapted from
a benchmark cylindrical multi tank problem (Till et al.
(2004)). The spherical tank accentuates the nonlinear re-
lation between ow rate and tank level. Figure (1) repre-
8th IFAC Symposium on Advanced Control of Chemical Processes
Singapore, July 10-13, 2012
66
Table 2. Model Parameters considered for
spherical two tank system
Parameters Values
H
2
30 cm
Valve Coecients 0.7 cm
1
2
hmax 60 cm
No. of State Events 1
No. of Control Events 1
Sampling Time 4 sec
sents the schematic of the spherical two tank system. It
consists of a pump that delivers liquid ow Q
1
to Tank 1
through a control valve. Solenoid valve (on/o) V
1
is used
to interrupt ow between the two tanks. The feed pipe
to Tank 2 is at a height H
2
from bottom and located at
bottom of the Tank 1. Tank 2 drains freely to atmosphere.
Reverse ow from Tank-2 to Tank-1 is allowed by means
of a non-return valve. The aim is to control the level in
Tank-2 h
2
by manipulating the input ow Q
1
and solenoid
valve V
1
. Note that this simple example demonstrates
both, controlled switching (opening or closing V
1
) as well
as autonomous switching (h
2
crosses H
2
from above or
below). The model equations are as follows:
if h
2
H
2
_
(hmax h
1
)
dh
1
dt
= Q
1
V
1
k
1
_
2g(h
1
(h
2
H
2
))
(hmax h
2
)
dh
2
dt
= V
1
k
1
_
2g(h
1
(h
2
H
2
)) k
2
_
2gh
2
if h
2
< H
2
_
(hmax h
1
)
dh
1
dt
= Q
1
V
1
k
1
_
2gh
1
(hmax h
2
)
dh
2
dt
= V
1
k
1
_
2gh
1
k
2
_
2gh
2
(20)
Model parameters are tabulated in Table (2) for reference.
We dene two binary indicator variables
1
and
2
to
capture the two discrete events as follows: (1)h
2
H
2

1
= 1, (2) V
1
= open
2
= 1. Thus = {
1
,
2
},
which can lead to at most four operating modes. However,
only three operating modes are possible. Note that when
solenoid valve V
1
is closed, the two tanks are decoupled
and the level h
2
relation to H
2
does not play a role. So the
mode with
1
= 1,
2
= 0 is subsumed in M
3
.
The trajectory which excite all the modes is assumed to
be available. Note that in mode M
3
valve V
1
is closed. As a
result Tank-1 dynamics are those of a pure integrator and
Tank 2 is continuously drained and cannot be inuenced by
h
1
. We generate various linear models over the trajectory
using bounded error criteria, which is tabulated in Table
(3).
The gap metric between pairs of models is used to cluster
the models and cluster representative are chosen. The
number of linear models generated using the trajectory
for three dierent modes was documented in Table (3)
for various values of the 20 step ahead prediction errors.
Subsequently the gap metric between each pair of models
(M
i(Mj)
, M

i
(Mj)
) was calculated.
Table (4) documents the number of clusters obtained for
various values of
thr
and
gap
. It can be observed that
although a large number of models were determined using
the bounded error approach (see Table 3) only a few
cluster representative models have been selected by the
gap metric based clustering approach described in the
previous section.
The number of clusters in each mode of the the two
tank process were summarized in Table (4). The cluster
representative models were combined using the Bayesian
Table 3. Total linear models generated by
linearizing the rst principles model of eq. (20)
across the trajectory generated, using p=20

thr
N
M
1
N
M
2
N
M
3
Total linear models
2 5 8 56 69
1.5 5 10 115 130
1 5 12 371 388
Table 4. Number of models selected for the
model bank in for the spherical tank example
using gap metric based clustering approach for
various values of
thr
and
gap

thr
gap Nc
1
Nc
2
Nc
3
Total
0.75 2 2 3 7
0.60 2 2 3 7
2 0.50 2 3 3 8
0.35 2 3 4 9
0.25 2 4 5 11
0.75 2 2 4 8
0.60 2 3 4 9
1.5 0.50 2 3 5 10
0.35 2 3 6 11
0.25 2 4 7 13
0.75 2 2 4 8
0.60 2 3 5 10
1 0.50 2 3 6 11
0.35 2 4 7 13
0.25 2 5 10 17
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
x 10
4
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
samples
h
1

(
c
m
)


First principles
fuzzy
Bayesian
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
x 10
4
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
samples
h
2

(
c
m
)
Mode 2
H
2
Mode 1
Mode 3
Fig. 2. 20 step ahead prediction validation for model set
with
thr
= 1.5 and
gap
= 0.60 compared with
nonlinear rst principles model. Dotted represents
rst principles model model response, dash dotted line
represents response of proposed approach using fuzzy
weighting and bold line indicates response of proposed
modeling using Bayesian weighting.
and Fuzzy methodologies discussed above to obtain the
mode specic models, which were then combined using
indicator functions to yield global model. These models
are only partially linear due the multiplication between
the continuous variables and indicator variables and take
the form of eqs. (17-18). The global models were validated
by comparing their 20-step ahead predictions with rst
principles model.
For fuzzy aggregation, lagged values of states and inputs
are also taken to ensure the directionality. Eq.(13) is used
to nd membership functions of the various cluster repre-
sentative models within a mode. The state space matrices
of each models are thus combined and defuzzied as in
eq.(14) to get specic mode representative models. For the
Bayesian approach, similar procedure is used to calculate
the model weights to combine cluster representative mod-
els.
8th IFAC Symposium on Advanced Control of Chemical Processes
Singapore, July 10-13, 2012
67
Table 5. Comparison 20 step ahead prediction
errors corresponding to various values of
thr
and
gap
of the spherical two tank system
Error RMS of y(k + 20/k) y
Fuzzy Bayesian
RMSE RMSE

thr
gap h
1
h
2
2-norm h
1
h
2
2-norm
RMSE RMSE
0.75 1.51 1.76 2.32 1.31 1.07 1.69
0.60 1.55 1.87 2.43 1.31 1.07 1.69
2 0.50 1.55 1.79 2.37 1.31 1.07 1.69
0.35 1.56 1.85 2.42 1.30 1.07 1.67
0.25 1.54 1.90 2.45 1.30 1.06 1.67
0.75 2.14 1.62 2.68 1.31 1.01 1.65
[0.60 1.51 1.73 2.30 1.30 1.01 1.64]
1.5 0.50 1.58 1.70 2.32 1.31 1.01 1.65
0.35 1.85 4.60 4.96 1.32 2.49 2.82
0.25 1.79 4.64 4.97 1.32 2.49 2.82
0.75 2.54 2.25 3.39 1.42 1.62 2.15
0.60 2.39 1.82 3.00 1.31 1.03 1.67
1 0.50 1.64 1.77 2.41 1.32 1.03 1.67
0.35 1.87 4.66 5.02 1.32 2.50 2.83
0.25 1.84 3.93 4.34 1.36 2.35 2.69
Table 6. 20 step ahead prediction error com-
parison of best single model and best single
model in each mode with best model set ob-
tained
thr
= 1.5 and
gap
= 0.60 of the two
spherical tank system
Error RMS of y(k + 20/k) y
meas
Case Best single Best single Multiple Multiple
model for MLD model modeling: modeling:
all modes (Fuzzy) (Bayesian)

thr
1.5 h
1
h
2
h
1
h
2
h
1
h
2
h
1
h
2
gap0.60 45.58 9.97 20.34 4.47 1.50 1.73 1.30 1.01
Table (5) compares the root mean square error (RMSE)
of the 20-step ahead predictions of the multiple model ,
aggregated using fuzzy and Bayesian approach for various
values of
thr
and
gap
. y(k + p/k) represents the p step
predicted output of the multiple model [eq.(19)] and y
represent the response of rst principles model (eq.(5)).
From table (5) it is clear that 2-norm of the prediction
error minimum for the model set with
thr
= 1.5cm and

gap
= 0.60. It is observed that Bayesian approach consis-
tently outperforms the fuzzy approach. This may be due to
the fact that while aggregating the models fuzzy approach
does not use the information from the current plant mea-
surements. On the other hand, the Bayesian methodology
uses the current plant measurements (in the form of resid-
uals) for assigning weights to the various models. Figure
(2) shows the plot of 20 step ahead predictions of best
multiple model set (
thr
=1.5,
gap
=0.60), comparing both
fuzzy and Bayesian aggregation. Both fuzzy and Bayesian
aggregated models yield good performance in most part
of the trajectory. Prediction of fuzzy aggregated models
deteriorate at regions where tanks have low levels where
the predicted levels become negative.
To quantify the benet of using the multiple model ap-
proach to describe switched nonlinear system, 20 step
ahead predictions of the best performing single model
across all modes (the switching is not represented ex-
plicitly) and best single model correspond to each mode
are compared with the multiple model approach (using

thr
= 1.5cm and
gap
= 0.60) in Table 6). It is noted
that the long range predictions by the multiple models are
reasonably accurate relative to the single model prediction.
This justies the use of multiple models to represent the
nonlinear switched system.
7. CONCLUSIONS
Switched systems are becoming increasingly important in
process industry, where synergistic interactions of contin-
uous and discrete variables occur. First principle models
of such system are inadequate for online applications such
as like in MPC. In this work we propose a general scheme
of modeling for nonlinear switched systems using multiple
linear models. In particular, the current work presents a
systematic approach which addresses the issues of num-
ber of linear models and their locations in hybrid state
space required for an accurate representation of nonlinear
switched system. The issue of aggregating these multiple
linear models using two dierent approaches namely, fuzzy
and Bayesian weighting is also presented. The results
clearly indicate that the proposed systematic approach
provides signicant benets over a single mode approach
or heuristic based multiple model approach.
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