PI Controllers for 1-D Nonlinear Transport Equation

In this paper, we introduce a method to obtain necessary and sufficient stability conditions for systems governed by one-dimensional nonlinear hyperbolic partial-differential equations with closed-loop integral controllers, when the linear frequency analysis cannot be used anymore. We study the stability of a general nonlinear transport equation where the control input and the measured output are both located on the boundaries. The principle of the method is to extract the limiting part of the stability from the solution using a projector on a finite-dimensional space and then use a Lyapunov approach. This paper improves a result of Trinh, Andrieu, and Xu, and gives an optimal condition for the design of the controller. The results are illustrated with numerical simulations where the predicted stable and unstable regions can be clearly identified.