Adaptive temperature control of a class of home refrigerators

A simplified dynamic model of a household refrigerator incorporating a single evaporator, variable position air damper, and variable speed evaporator fan is constructed. It is shown that, with proper parametric values, the model can accurately recreate data measured from such a refrigerator. Using the model, a model reference adaptive controller is derived and executed on a physical plant. The new controller improves upon the temperature tracking accuracy of stock controllers and is shown to adapt to changing unit types, environmental conditions, and loading cases.