Engineering Control System-relating to Energy Conservation

( Gavin
Ritz 2009.11.16.9.13NZT)

Hi there Richard (Kenaway)

Do you have any simple information on
engineering control systems relating to energy conservation and entropy? It
would be great if you have the formulas to work out the work done by an engineering
control system.

Regards

Gavin

[Fropm Richard Kennaway (2009.11.20.1409 GMT)]

(Gavin Ritz 2009.11.16.9.13NZT)

Hi there Richard (Kenaway)

Do you have any simple information on engineering control systems relating to energy conservation and entropy? It would be great if you have the formulas to work out the work done by an engineering control system.

Sorry not to have got back to you on this. I'm not sure if there is anything like what you're asking. Control systems usually draw on external sources of energy to do their controlling, so the law of conservation of energy isn't a particular consideration (although energy conservation, in the sense of minimising the amount of fuel used, often is).

As for entropy, there have been discussions of the relation between control and entropy here on CSGNET, but without much conclusion. A control system can be seen as pumping entropy out of the controlled variable (i.e. making it vary less) into the output (which varies more), but whether that is a useful concept in the mathematical analysis of control systems is less clear. I've looked for work on this in the past, and the only thing I could find was some papers and a book by one George Saridis, but there didn't seem to be much in them. According to an obituary of him that I read, he founded a whole field called "intelligent control", but I couldn't find much there there.

ยทยทยท

At 20:20 +0000 15/11/09, Gavin Ritz wrote:

--
Richard Kennaway, jrk@cmp.uea.ac.uk, Richard Kennaway
School of Computing Sciences,
University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.