Modelling of a water treatment plant. A multi-model representation

This paper examines the problem of modelling a non-linear dynamic system by a Takagi-Sugeno model. Although this type of model is well adapted to the representation of a system with non-linear behaviour, its use does however raise real problems in the identification of its structure and parameters, mainly because of the enormous combinatorial increase in model complexity as a function of the number of inputs, and the coupling between the premises and consequence parts. We propose a simplified model structure and an algorithm for the identification of this structure and its parameters. The method is illustrated with reference to data from a wastewater treatment plant of the Greater Nancy Urban Authority. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.