Robustness of Rotating Stall Control for Axial-Flow Compressors*

Feedback control has been pursued to address the rotating stall problem in axial flow compressors in order to extend the stable operating range and to improve engine performance. These controllers guarantee the stability of the bifurcated operating solution near the stall point. In this paper, an analytic approach is developed to characterize the robustness of some stabilizing controllers for rotating stall in axial-flow compressors. The numerical examples show that the size of the admissible uncertainty set changes for stabilizing controllers with different feedback gains. It is also proved that a nonlinear stabilizing control is not necessarily superior to a linear one.