Subpredictor-Based Fuzzy Control Design for a Reaction–Diffusion Equation

This article addresses the stabilization of the nonlinear reaction–diffusion equation with an unknown but bounded delay. Based on Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy rules, a T–S fuzzy partial differential equation (PDE) model is constructed to describe the nonlinear distributed parameter system. More importantly, we contribute to the large delay compensation and the future state prediction by introducing a chain of subpredictors for the T–S fuzzy PDE model, and the convergence of observation errors is guaranteed as well. Different from the conventional approaches, the proposed observer can compensate a larger delay. To stabilize the system, for the first time, a new subpredictor-based T–S fuzzy control law is suggested by using the proposed observer, which is composed of elementary observers connected in series. The implementation of the subpredictor feedback is simpler than the classical methods that only one of the elementary observers is employed. Via Lyapunov–Krasovskii approach, sufficient exponential stability conditions are established in the framework of linear matrix inequalities. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of theoretical results.