Teaching-Research Fellow

Control Systems Group
Dept. of Engineering, Univ. of Leicester
University Road, Leicester, UK
LE1 7RH
T: +44 (0)116 252 5642
F: +44 (0)116 252 2619
E: rmm23@leicester.ac.uk

Short Biography

Rafael M. Morales Viviescas was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia. Besides his academic responsibilities within the Department, he is involved in the RTVP project with AgustaWestland Helicopters for the design of controllers to reduce vibrations in helicopters. Major benefits of mitigating vibrations include improved flight comfort and significant savings in maintenance costs by extending the life of the mechanical components. Prior to this, he was involved in the TSB-funded project REACT (Rotor Embedded Actuator Control Technology) also with AgustaWestland and several UK university partners. He worked under the supervision of Dr. Matthew Turner and Prof. Ian Postlethwaite.

He received both PhD and MSc degrees from the University of Manchester (Control Systems Centre) in 2004 and 2008, respectively, in the area of Control Engineering. During his PhD he was supervised by Dr. William Heath and his thesis investigates the robustness and design of anti-windup and cross-directional control systems. During his MSc Project he worked under the guidance of Prof. Hong Wang.

He completed his undergraduate studies in Electronic Engineering in 2001 at the University Santo Tomas (Bogotá, Colombia). For his graduation project, he participated in the design and construction of an animatronic (spectacled) bear for the company Maloka. He is a member of the IEEE.

Research Interests

He is interested in the practical applications of robust and non-linear control theory to improve the performance and understanding of feedback control systems. His main areas of research may be categorised as follows:

• Vibration control of helicopters.
• Actuation control of dampers with semi-active capabilities in rotating systems.
• Robustness analysis and design of feedback control systems with saturating non-linearities using Integral Quadratic Constraints (IQCs).

Teaching Duties

Mechanics of Structures (EG2103)
Modelling and Classification of Data (EG4270/7013)
Mathematics with Computation (EG1001)
Experimentation 2 (EG2003)

Publications

Journal publications:

[J1] R. M. Morales and W. Heath. The Robustness and design of a constrained cross-directional control via IQCs. To appear in the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology.
[J2] R. M. Morales, G. Li and W. Heath. Anti-windup and the preservation of robustness against structured norm-bounded uncertainty. In preparation for IJRNC.

Conference Papers:

[C1] R. M. Morales and W. Heath and G. Li. Robustness preserving anti-windup for SISO systems. Submitted to the 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference, Orlando, USA, Dec. 12-15, 2011.
[C2] W. Heath, R. Morales and G. Li. Robustness preserving anti-windup: examples and counterexamples. To appear in the Proceedings of the IEEE Multi-Conference on Systems and Control, Denver, USA, Sept. 28-30, 2011.
[C3] R. M. Morales, M. Turner and I. Postlethwaite. Force tracking system using a semi-active valve lag damper for vibration reduction in helicopters. Proceedings of the UKACC Conference, Coventry, UK, Sept. 7-10, 2010.
[C4] R. M. Morales, G. Li and W. Heath. Robust anti-windup against LTI uncertainty using frequency dependent IQCs. Proceedings of the ICCAS-SICE conference, Fukuoka, Japan, Aug. 18-21, 2009.
[C5] R. M. Morales, G. Li and W. Heath. Anti-windup and the preservation of robustness against structured norm-bounded uncertainty. Proceedings of the 17th IFAC World Congress, Seoul, Korea, June 6-8, 2008.
[C6] R. M. Morales and W. Heath. Robust stability analysis of constrained cross-directional control via integral quadratic constraints. Proceedings of the 45th IEEE Conference on Decision & Control, San Diego, USA, Dec 13-15, 2006.
[C7] R. M. Morales and W. Heath. Numerical design of robust cross-directional control with saturating actuators. Proceedings of the Control Systems 2006 Conference, Tampere, Finland, July 6-11, 2006.

Technical Reports:

[R1] R. M. Morales, M. C. Turner and I. Postlethwaite. Analysis and Design of a Force tracking controller for an active valve lag damper. Technical Report - REACT project, June 2009.
[R2] R. M. Morales, M. C. Turner and I. Postlethwaite. Active trailing edge control algorithms. Technical Report - REACT project, January 2010.
[R3] R. M. Morales, M. C. Turner and I. Postlethwaite. System ID and preliminaries of a robust vibration control scheme for a scale 4-blade helicopter rotor system with ATE actuation. Technical Report - REACT project, June 2010.

Thesis and Dissertation:

[T1] R. M. Morales. The robustness of constrained cross-directional control and ant-windup systems, Ph.D. thesis, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Univ. of Manchester, Manchester, UK, 2008.