Brandon@University of Illinois
An Alleyne Research Group Web Site
Brandon Hencey
Currently, I'm a fourth year PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. My research focuses on control of complex mechanical systems with a focus on energy systems. Currently, two of the applications I work on include fluid power systems and vapor compression cycles. In case there is any confusion, fluid power is more than just earthmoving equipment. For example, check out the "micro helping hand".
One approach to the control of complex mechanical systems is gain scheduling. The philosophy being, a family of local linear models are pieced together in order to sufficiently approximate the complex global behavior of the system. Next, powerful linear control techniques are employed to design a controller for each linear model. Last, the controller are integrated to form a global controller used to control the complex system.
Nevertheless, integrating the controllers is not necessarily a trivial task. I am developing advanced controller interpolation methods that enable robust gain scheduling. The theory has analytic ties to Youla parameterization, robust control theory, and linear parameter varying systems (LPV), whereas the actual calculations are performed using computationally efficient linear matrix inequalities (LMIs).