Observer-based Event-triggered Boundary Control of the One-phase Stefan Problem

Abstract: This paper provides an observer-based event-triggered boundary control strategy for the one-phase Stefan problem using the position and velocity measurements of the moving interface. The infinite-dimensional backstepping approach is used to design the underlying observer and controller. For the event-triggered implementation of the continuous-time observer-based controller, a dynamic event triggering condition is proposed. The triggering condition determines the times at which the control input needs to be updated. In between events, the control input is applied in a \textit{Zero-Order-Hold} fashion. It is shown that the dwell-time between two triggering instances is uniformly bounded below excluding \textit{Zeno behavior}. Under the proposed event-triggered boundary control approach, the well-posedness of the closed-loop system along with certain model validity conditions is provided. Further, using Lyapunov approach, the global exponential convergence of the closed-loop system to the setpoint is proved. A simulation example is provided to illustrate the theoretical results.