Nonlinear observers of the thermal loads applied to the helium bath of a cryogenic Joule-Thompson Cycle

François Bonne (1, 2) , Mazen Alamir (1) , Patrick Bonnay (2)

1 GIPSA-SYSCO - GIPSA - Systèmes non linéaires et complexité
2 INAC - Institut Nanosciences et Cryogénie

In this paper, a nonlinear observer of the thermal loads applied to the helium bath of a cryogenic refrigerator is proposed. The thermal loads represent a time-varying thermal disturbance expected to take place in future tokamaks refrigerators such as those used in the cooling systems for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) or the Japan Torus-60 Super Advanced (JT-60SA). The proposed observer can serve as monitoring tool for cryogenic operators and/or in observer-based advanced control strategies. The observer is based on a part of the nonlinear model of the refrigerator. The paper details how the physical model of the Joule/Thompson cycle is obtained and the structure of the observer and validates its performance using experimental data.

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique

François Bonne, Mazen Alamir, Patrick Bonnay. Nonlinear observers of the thermal loads applied to the helium bath of a cryogenic Joule-Thompson Cycle. Journal of Process Control, 2014, 24 (3), pp.73-80. ⟨10.1016/j.jprocont.2013.12.015⟩. ⟨hal-00922066⟩