Control design for an irrigation channel from physical data

In this paper, a tool for design of decentralized controllers for irrigation channels is developed. A physical model of the channel is obtained using the St. Venant equations, and a data set is generated by simulating this model. A first order nonlinear model useful for control design is then estimated from the simulated data using system identification techniques, and a controller is designed based on the estimated model and given design specifications. The decentralized controllers are PI controllers augmented with first order low pass filters. The designed controllers showed good performance in field experiments; the water levels recovered quickly from disturbances with small deviations from setpoints.