Two-phase cooling is attractive for high heat-flux applications arising in high-power electronics such as LEDs, all-electric vehicles, and radar systems. A key challenge is critical heat-flux that could cause device damage due to dryout. This paper discusses a systematic design of robust and gain-scheduled controls for dryout avoidance in vapor compression cycles. Linear models from various operating points (OP) are clustered to reduce model nonlinearity.
H-infinity controllers are synthesized to reach local robust stability. The gain-scheduled controller combining local controllers and OP switching shows excellent disturbance rejection performance in experimental comparison with the open-loop operation.
Control Engineering Practice, 39, Jun 2015, pp. 67-89.