The Texas -Wisconsin - California Control Consortium (TWCCC) carries out joint industrial-academic research in the areas of chemical process modeling, monitoring, control and optimization.
The TWCCC was established in 1993 in the Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas. The consortium expanded its activities in 1995 to include the University of Wisconsin. In 2007 the consortium again expanded to the University of Southern California.
Five principal investigators direct the current research activities:
Department of Chemical Engineering
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Department of Computer Science
University of Southern California
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
The campuses of UT-Austin, Wisconsin and University of Southern California ChE departments are recognized internationally for leading research programs in process modeling, monitoring, control and optimization.
In addition, the Departments of Chemical Engineering at Wisconsin, Texas and Southern California are recognized as leaders across a broad spectrum of chemical engineering research and educational areas. The Department of Computer Science at Wisconsin is famous for outstanding optimization research, in addition to strengths in many other CS research fields. All of these departments attract large numbers of highly-qualified graduate students.
The current research areas of emphasis in the TWCCC are:
Control System Monitoring and Diagnosis: multivariable control performance assessment, performance diagnosis, loop auditing, minimum variance control benchmark, sensor and actuator diagnosis, MPC performance monitoring
Dynamic Modeling of Chemical Processes: microelectronics process modeling, solid phase formation and growth, crystallization, packed bed distillation, batch distillation, reactive distillation, packed bed catalytic reactors, advanced materials processing, parameter estimation software development, model reduction
Planning, scheduling and supply chain management: mixed-integer and constraint programming models and algorithms.
Materials Processing: chemical vapor deposition, measurement of film composition and growth rate, plasma etching, lithography, rapid thermal processing, particle formation, measurement of size and shape of particles.
Dynamic System Identification: subspace identification methods, prediction error methods, closed loop identification, identification for monitoring, design of experiments.
Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (MPC) and Moving Horizon Estimation (MHE): large-scale MPC and MHE, model-based control, constrained control, adaptive control, multivariable control.
Optimization theory and algorithms: interior-point algorithms for linear and nonlinear programming; algorithms for structured optimization problems in control and other areas; optimization under uncertainty; applications to cancer treatment, meteorology and other areas; algorithms for parallel computers; optimization software; applications to petroleum reservoirs and imaging.
Statistical Process Monitoring and Fault Diagnosis: fault detection, fault identification and isolation, fault reconstruction, fault classification, data reconciliation, sensor validation, dynamic process fault diagnosis, process chemometrics, principal component analysis, canonical variate analysis, partial least squares, multivariate statistical quality control.
The combined process modeling, control and optimization programs have more than 20 full-time graduate students and several postdoctoral researchers in addition to the five faculty members supervising the ongoing research. During the last five years, approximately 25 Ph.D. and 1 M.S. students graduated from the three universities in the area of process modeling, control and optimization. Graduates of the program are highly sought by industry and universities, often accepting jobs more than one year prior to completion of their degrees. Approximately 50 percent of the graduates are U.S. citizens.
Process control facilities available for research are outstanding. We employ a variety of control systems (Emerson Delta V, National Instruments) in experimental studies, and we also have numerous networks of PCs and high-performance Linux clusters. Most students carry out both theoretical and experimental research. Our program focuses on maintaining a balance between fundamentals and practice.
TWCCC operates in a flexible way, permitting individual project support as well as general support of the consortium. In many cases, joint research is being carried out at manufacturing or R&D sites. The normal fee for participation is $35,000 per year, but larger funded projects are also carried out. We hold two meetings per year in which industrial members can learn about research results and exchange ideas.
Benefits to participants who have joined TWCCC include:
access to state of the art non-proprietary software without cost
cooperative research projects that directly benefit the company
detailed up-to-date information on research in progress
access to high quality M.S. and Ph.D. students for eventual employment
early release of technical papers and reports
input on research project selection
networking with other company representatives regarding process control technology
leveraging of financial support
student internships
Questions regarding TWCCC and its activities should be directed to either: |
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| Thomas F. Edgar (edgar@che.utexas.edu)
Department of Chemical Engineering Phone: (512) 471-3080 |
James B. Rawlings
(jbraw@bevo.che.wisc.edu)
Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering Phone: (608) 263-5859 |
S. Joe Qin (sqin@usc.edu) Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Phone: 213-740-2225 (Department Office) |
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This page was last updated on January 5, 2009 by Mary Diaz.