Cooperative Control of Air Flow for HVAC Systems

A dynamic pressure and variable air volume (VAV) control strategy is proposed for building heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. The strategy consists in two level control, namely, pressure loop control and temperature loop control. The pressure control loop is to make sure that the air pressure at the inlet of each room is equal to a certain value while the temperature control loop is to control the room temperature which is achieved by adjusting the VAV box so that the supply air flow rate can be varied to achieve the room setting temperature. For the pressure control loop, a cooperative control technique is applied. The two control loops are coupled. This paper will analyze the stability of the overall system and give a sufficient condition on the initial values in terms of rooms and the HVAC system parameters.