Dr Yi Cao

Dr Yi Cao

Senior Lecturer
Location: Building 52
E: y.cao@cranfield.ac.uk
T: +44 (0) 1234 750 111 ext 5650
Dept. of Offshore, Process & Energy Engineering


Background

Background

Yi Cao is a Senior Lecture in the Department of Offshore, Process & Energy Engineering and the Course Director of Process Systems Engineering MSc. He obtained his MEng degree in Control Engineering from Zhejiang University in P. R. China in 1985 and his PhD degree in Engineering from the University of Exeter in 1996. His research interests are in advanced process control, including nonlinear system identification, nonlinear model predictive control, plantwide process control, self-optimising control and statistical process monitoring. He has published one monograph in Optimal Control Theory and Applications and over 100 refereed journal and conference research papers. One of these papers has been awarded as the best industrial application paper at the conference Control’96 by the journal of Control Engineering Practice in 1996.

Yi Cao was the main inventor of the patented technology, Inferential Slug Control (ISC), which received the East England Energy Group (EEEgr) Innovation Award in 2010. He successfully conducted a field trial on the ISC in North Sea in 2011. The field trial showed the ISC is able to increase oil production by 9.6% in addition to suppressing slugging.

 

Supported research

  • EPSRC Grant: Non-square Control System Design for Plantwide Chemical Processes
  • TSB Grant: A Novel Slug Optimal Control System to Increase Oil Production from UK Brown Fields
  • KTP Grant: Development of Compact Inline Equipment for Sub-sea Processing Systems.
  • TMF4 Project: Multiphase Slug Flow Control

 

Awards

  • 1996: the best industrial application paper award by the journal of Control Engineering Practice.
  • 2010: East England Energy Group (EEEgr) Innovation Award for the work on advanced slug detector and control.

 

Patents

  • Y. Cao, H. Yeung and L. Lao, “Inferential Slug Control”, patent application filed in April 2009.

 

Selected publications

  1. R K Al-Seyab, and Y. Cao, “Differential Recurrent Neural Network based Predictive Control”, Computers and Chemical Engineering, Vol. 32, No. 7, pp. 1533—1545, 2008
  2. Y. Cao and V. Kariwala, “Bidirectional branch and bound for control variable selection”, Computers and Chemical Engineering, Vol. 32, No. 10, pp. 2306—2319, 2008.
  3. V. Kariwala and Y. Cao, “Bidirectional branch and bound for control variable selection, Part II: Exact local method for self-optimizing control”, Computers and Chemical Engineering, Vol. 33, No. 8, pp. 1402—1412, 2009.
  4. V. Kariwala and Y. Cao, “Branch and bound method for multiobjective pairing selection”, Automatica, Vol. 46, pp. 932—936, 2010.
  5. P.P. Odiowei and Y. Cao, “Nonlinear Dynamic Process Monitoring using Canonical Variate Analysis and Kernel Density Estimations”, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 36—45, 2010.
  6. V. Kariwala and Y. Cao, “Bidirectional branch and bound for control variable selection, Part III: Local Average Loss Minimization”, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 54—61, 2010.
  7. P.P. Odiowei and Y. Cao, “State-Space Independent Component Analysis for Nonlinear Dynamic Process Monitoring”, Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, Vol. 103, pp. 59—65, 2010.
  8. A.I. Ogazi, Y. Cao, H. Yeung and L. Lao, “Slug Control with Large Valve Opening to Maximize Oil Production”, 124883-PA, SPE Journal, Vol. 15, No.3, pp. 812—821, 2010.
  9. V. Kariwala, P-E Odiowei, Y. Cao, T. Chen, A Branch and Bound Method for Fault Isolation through Missing Variable Analysis, Journal of Process Control, Vol.20, No.10, pp. 1198—1206, 2010.
  10. 0.  J. C. Atuonwu, Y. Cao, G. P. Rangaiah and M. O. Tade, “Nonlinear model predictive control of a multistage evaporator system using recurrent neural networks”, Control Engineering Practice, Vol.18, No. 12, pp.1418 – 1428, 2010.

Selected publications

  1. Y. Cao , W. J. Yan, "Multi-objective optimisation of restricted complexity controllers", European Journal of Control, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2003, pp. 61—65.
  2. Y. Cao, Z. J. Yang, "Muiltobjective process controllability analysis", Computers and Chemical Engineering, Vol. 28, No.1—2, pp.83—90, 2004.
  3. Y. Cao , "Direct and Indirect Gradient Control for Static Optimisation", International Journal of Automation and Computing, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 60 -- 66, 2005.
  4. Y. Cao and P. Saha, "Improved branch and bound method for control structure screening", Chemical Engineering Science, Vol. 60., pp. 1555-1564, 2005.
  5. Y. Cao, "A Formulation of Nonlinear Model Predictive Control using Automatic Differentiation", Journal of Process Control, Vol. 15, No. 8, pp. 851-858, 2005
  6. Al Seyab, R.K., Cao, Y. and Yang, S.H, "Predictive control for the ALSTOM gasifier problem IEE Proceedings: Control Theory and Applications", 153 (3) pp. 293-301, 2006
  7. R.K. Al Seyab, and Y. Cao, "Nonlinear model predictive control for the ALSTOM gasifier", Journal of Process Control, Vol. 16, No. 8, pp. 795-808, 2006.

Full list of publications available here

School of Engineering

Quick navigation:

 
Print this page Bookmark page Send to a friend