Control of irrigation channels affected by wind stress

Abstract

In this paper we deal with setpoint regulation and disturbance rejection in irrigation channels. The setpoint is the water level required by the farmers while the disturbances are offtakes to farms and wind stress acting on the water surface. A recently proposed model based on the Saint Venant equations capable of reproducing the pool dynamics also when strong winds are blowing in the direction opposite to the main flow direction is used to represent the pools in simulation and simple transfer function models which capture the relevant channel dynamics are exploited for controller design. The controller configuration of choice consists in a PI compensator sitting in the feedback loop from th..