It's great to be curious, and the examples in the book are intended to be realistic examples. The control rules for the HVAC application -- especially the fuzzy version -- would work great in real applications.
But if you're serious about developing and testing this kind of application yourself, the first thing you'll want to do is make the simulator that the rules work against more realistic. The simulator in the book works fine, but it's designed to make watching the controller more interesting, not necessarily to be a realistic simulation of a building. For example, the rate at which heat is lost to the outside is astronomical. There's no insulation at all in the imaginary building, and all the windows are open! Change the cooling constants to more realistic values -- some actual engineering calculations may be needed here -- so that the rate of temperature change is comparable to what would be observed in a real building. This is the main reason why the heat pumps run all the time. Second, the simulator, for the sake of simplicity, uses only one array of temperatures to represent the floors. But any sort of decent finite-event simulator should use two arrays, one to represent the temperature at the current time step, and one for the next time step; the "next" calculation should be based on the "current" temps. But in the simulator in the book, there's only one array, and as a result, there's a strong, artificial "heat rises" effect which adds more heat than there should be to the upper floors. Third, as Bob Orchard has pointed out to me, if you've got one heat pump servicing three floors and you close the vent to one floor, the other two floors get 1.5x as much heat flux. This effect isn't accounted for in the simple simulator in the book, meaning that much of the output of the heat pumps are "wasted." I think David wrote: > Hi guys, > > I understand this area has been posted a few times. I am following the > materials in the book (JIA) especially the example on HVAC and always > have the urge to test and run the simulations myself. > > When I run the fuzzy version of the HVAC controller in the book, I > realize the heat pump is on most of the time. A plot of the graph > reveals that the pump is in operation 99.8% of the time. On the other > hand, the Boolean logic version of the controller is in operation about > <90%. > > I understand the algorithms implemented are not meant to be optimal as > this is not a book on control engineering. > However, based on the two observations I have two questions. > > 1. Am I doing the right thing ? Is the Fuzzy version of the > controller suppose to be in operation close to 99.8% of the time? > 2. I wonder if there is a way to make the fuzzy version to be > actually more energy efficient (i.e. operation times to be lower than > the Boolean version, yet without switching the pump from OFF mode to > operation mode too frequently)? I read in some books and websites that > fuzzy logic sometimes do help to cut energy cost. Any ideas how this can > be done ? > > > I wonder if anyone has tweak around with the example in the book before. > Would appreciate any comments and ideas. Many thanks!! > > Regards, > David > --------------------------------------------------------- Ernest Friedman-Hill Science and Engineering PSEs Phone: (925) 294-2154 Sandia National Labs FAX: (925) 294-2234 PO Box 969, MS 9012 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Livermore, CA 94550 http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov -------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users [EMAIL PROTECTED]' in the BODY of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED], NOT to the list (use your own address!) List problems? Notify [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------
