Port-Hamiltonian Sliding Mode Observer Design for a Counter-current Heat Exchanger

This paper presents a sliding mode observer (SMO) for estimating temperatures in a heat exchanger. First a port-Hamiltonian formulation for a countercurrent heat exchanger is proposed. It is so as to guarantee convergence of the observer. It is shown that the Stokes-Dirac structure obtained by opening only the dissipation ports due to the convection phenomenon, is conservative. Secondly, a SMO based on an interconnected structure of port-Hamiltonian systems is designed. The convergence of the dynamics of the estimation error is proven. The simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of this estimation strategy.