Professor Qing-Chang Zhong
Professor of Control and Systems Engineering

Address:
Professor Qing-Chang Zhong MSc, DIC, PhD, FIET, SMIEEE
Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering
University of Sheffield
Sheffield S1 3JD
Tel: (+44) (0)114 222 5630
Fax: (+44) (0)114 222 5683
Email: q.zhong @ sheffield.ac.uk
Room: C06, Amy Johnson Building

Background

EPSRC-funded sabbatical, Virginia Tech., USA, 2012 - 2013
EPSRC-funded sabbatical, University of California, San Diego, USA, 2012
Professor, Loughborough University, UK, 2010 - 2012
Senior Research Fellow, Royal Academy of Engineering/Leverhulme Trust, UK, 2009 - 2010
Senior Lecturer, The University of Liverpool, UK, 2005 - 2010
Senior Lecturer then Reader, University of Glamorgan, UK, 2004 - 2005
Research Associate, Imperial College London, UK, 2001 - 2003
Research Associate, Technion-Israel Instiute of Technology, Israel, 2000 - 2001
Research Assistant, Shanghai Jiao-Tong University, China, 1997 - 2000
Research Assistant, Hunan University, China, 1994 - 1997
Assistant Lecturer, Hunan Institute of Engineering, China, 1990 - 1994

Personal website: http://zhongqc.staff.shef.ac.uk/

Grants

• Q.-C. Zhong, Developing Fundamental Theory and Enabling Technologies for Parallel Operation of Inverters to Facilitate Large-scale Utilisation of Renewable Energy, EPSRC, 10/2012-09/2015, £459,598.
• Q.-C. Zhong, International Collaboration Sabbatical: To Foster Long-term Collaboration with Leading Control and Power Electronics Experts in the USA, EPSRC, 09/2011-09/2012, £179,167.
• R. Thring (PI), G. Offer, M. McCulloch, Q.-C. Zhong, F. Assadian, K. J. Burnham, J. Marco, N. Brandon, R. Martinez-Botas, T. Larkowski, D. A. Howey, Developing FUTURE Vehicles (Fundamental Understanding of Technologies for Ultra Reduced Emission Vehicles) (Project funding: £3.5M), EPSRC, 09/2011-08/2015, £571,423.
• Q.-C. Zhong, Charging Systems with Grid Support for Electric Vehicles, EPSRC (KTA), 09/2011-09/2012, £126,530
• Q.-C. Zhong, Further Development of the Synchronverter Tech. to Increase its Technology-Readiness Level, EPSRC (KTA), 06/2010-05/2011, £120,447
• Q.-C. Zhong, HOMES: High-efficiency Off-grid Multi-source Electrical Supplies, EPSRC, PSW & TSB (KTP), 08/2010-10/2012, £181,527.
• Q.-C. Zhong, Development of common key technology for grid connection in distributed generation and renewable energy, Royal Academy of Engineering, 09/2009-09/2010, £41,292.
• P. Stewart (PI), Q.-C. Zhong and M. Eftekhari, Feasibility Study of Energy Recovery from Landing Aircraft (Project funding: £199, 224), EPSRC, 07/2009-06/2010, £111,759.
• Q.-C. Zhong, Software Re-configurable Control Circuitry, EPSRC  (DHPA) and add2 Ltd, UK, 10/2008- 09/2012, £90,000
• Q.-C. Zhong, Control System Design for the newly-invented Nheolis ATG Wind turbine, EPSRC (DHPA) and Nheolis, France, 10/2008- 09/2012, £90,000.
• Q.-C. Zhong (PI), A.C. Zolotas, D. Coca, K. Li and S. Evangelou, New-ACE: A Network of New Academics in Control Engineering, EPSRC, 10/2007-09/2010, £87,800.
• Q.-C. Zhong, Control and Stability Analysis of Time-Delay Systems, EPSRC, 09/2005-09/2008, £126,413.

Research Interests

Control Theory:

• Robust/H-infinity control
• Time-delay systems
• UDE (Uncertainty and Disturbance Estimator)-based control

Applications in Electrical Engineering:

• Control of inverters: Power quality improvement, neutral line provision, grid-friendly connection of renewable energy sources, parallel operation of inverters
• Electric drives
• Renewable energy and distributed generation, in particular, wind power
• Energy recovery and storage systems
• HOMES: High-efficiency Off-grid Multi-source Electrical Supplies

Applications in Aeronautical Engineering:

• Engine control
• Energy recovery from landing aircraft
• Aircraft power systems

Applications in Automotive Engineering:

• Hybrid electrical vehicles
• EV charging systems with grid support (V2G)
• EV drive systems
• Energy management
• Hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HIL) and rapid control prototyping (RCP)

Applications in Chemical Engineering:

• Integral processes with dead time
• Continuous Stirred Tank Reactors (CSTR)

PhD Projects

For a current list of PhD projects related to my areas of research please see the PhD Research Projects web pages.

Professional Activities

• Member, EPSRC Peer Review College, 2012 -
• Associate Editor, IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics, Nov. 2010 -
• Associate Editor, Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Control Systems Society, July 2009 -
• Italian Evaluation of Research Quality exercise (VQR 2004-2010), Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, 2012.
• Fellow of The Institute of Engineering and Technology (FIET)
• Senior Member of IEEE, 2004 -
• Vice Chair, IFAC Technical Committee 6.3 (Power and Energy Systems), 2011 -
• Vice Chair, IFAC Technical Committee 2.2 (Linear Control Systems), 2011 -
• Founding Director of the Network for New Academics in Control Engineering and related areas (New-ACE, www.newace.org.uk), originally funded by EPSRC and now a Group Member of UK Automatic Control Council (UKACC), 2007 - 2011
• Member, IEEE CSS Technical Committee on Systems with Uncertainty, 2010 -
• Member, IEEE CSS Technical Committee on Power Generation, 2010 -
• Member, IFAC Technical Committee 2.2 (Linear control systems), 2006 - 2011
• Member, IChemE Process Management and Control Subject Group Comm., 2009- 2011
• International Editorial Board Member of Journal of the Chinese Institute of Engineers, 2003-2008

Awards

• Highly Commended Certificate at the IET Innovation Awards 2009 for synchronverters (jointly with G. Weiss), November 2009.
• Best Doctoral Thesis (the Eryl Cadwaladar Davies Prize), Imperial College London, 2004.
• Outstanding Reviewer for Automatica, 2004

Research Monographs

1. Q.-C. Zhong and T. Hornik, Control of Power Inverters in Renewable Energy and Smart Grid Integration, Wiley-IEEE Press, 2012, available for download (with subscription or payment) at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/bkabstractplus.jsp?bkn=6381785 and http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9781118481806.
2. A. Visioli and Q.-C. Zhong, Control of Integral Processes with Dead Time, Springer-Verlag Limited, London, 2010, available for download (with subscription or payment) at http://www.springer.com/engineering/robotics/book/978-0-85729-069-4.
3. Q.-C. Zhong, Robust Control of Time-delay Systems. ISBN: 1-84628-264-0. Springer-Verlag Limited, London, 2006, available for download (with subscription or payment) at http://www.springer.com/engineering/control/book/978-1-84628-264-5.

          

Selected Journal Papers

1. T. Hornik and Q.-C. Zhong, Parallel PI voltage–H-infinity current controller for the neutral point of a three-phase inverter, IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics, vol.60, no.4, 1335-1343, 2013.
2. Q.-C. Zhong and T. Hornik, Cascaded current-voltage control to improve the power quality for a grid-connected inverter with a local load, IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics, vol.60, no.4, 1344-1355, 2013.
3. Q.-C. Zhong, Robust droop controller for accurate proportional load sharing among inverters operated in parallel, IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics, vol.60, no.4, 1281-1290, 2013.
4. Q.-C. Zhong, Harmonic droop controller to reduce the voltage harmonics of inverters, IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics, vol.60, no.3, 936-945, 2013.
5. X.-L. Wang, Q.-C. Zhong, Z.-Q. Deng and S.-Z. Yue, Current-controlled multi-phase slice permanent magnetic bearingless motors with open-circuited phases: Fault-Tolerant Controllability and its Verification, IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics, vol. 59, no. 5, 2059-2072, 2012.
6. Q.-C. Zhong, A. Kuperman and R.K. Stobart, Design of UDE-based controllers from their two-degree-of-freedom nature, Int. Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control, vol. 21, 1994–2008, 2011.
7. T. Hornik and Q.-C. Zhong, A current control strategy for voltage-source inverters in microgrids based on H-infinity and repetitive control, IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics, vol. 26, no. 3, 943-952, 2011.
8. Q.-C. Zhong and G. Weiss, Synchronverters: Inverters that mimic synchronous generators, IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics, vol.58, no.4, 1259-1267, 2011.
9. R.K. Stobart, A. Kuperman and Q.-C. Zhong, Uncertainty and disturbance estimator (UDE)-based control for uncertain LTI-SISO systems with state delays, ASME J. Dyn. Syst., Meas., Control, vol. 133, 024502, 1-6, 2011.
10. A. Kuperman and Q.-C. Zhong, Robust control of uncertain nonlinear systems with state delays based on an uncertainty and disturbance estimator, Int. Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control, vol.21, no.1, 79-92, 2011.
11. T. Hornik and Q.-C. Zhong, H-infinity repetitive voltage control of grid-connected inverters with a frequency adaptive mechanism, IET Power Electronics, vol.3, no.6, 925-935, 2010.
12. S. Shen, J. Zhang, X. Chen, Q.-C. Zhong and R. Thornton, ISG hybrid powertrain: A rule-based driver model incorporating look-ahead information, Vehicle System Dynamics, vol. 48, no.3, 301-337, 2010.
13. S. Hadd and Q.-C. Zhong, On feedback stabilizability of linear systems with state and input delays in Banach spaces,  IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control, vol. 54, no.3, 438-451, 2009.
14. Q.-C. Zhong, A. K. Nandi and M. F. Aburdene, Efficient implementation of the discrete Pascal transform using difference operators, IET Electronics Letters, vol. 43, no. 24, 1348-1350, 2007.
15. J. Sun, Q.-G. Wang and Q.-C. Zhong, A less conservative stability test for second-order linear time-varying vector differential equations, Int. Journal of Control, vol. 80, no. 4, 523–526, April 2007.
16. Q.-C. Zhong, J. Liang, G. Weiss, C.-M. Feng and T. Green, H-infinity control of the neutral point in 4-wire 3-phase DC-AC converters, IEEE Trans. Industrial Electronics, vol. 53, no.5, 1594-1602, 2006.
17. B. Wang, D. Rees and Q.-C. Zhong, Control of Integral Processes with Dead Time. Part IV: Various Issues about PI controllers, IEE Proc. Control Theory & Appl., vol. 153, no. 3, 302-306, 2006.
18. R. Majumder, B. Chauduri, B. Pal and Q.-C. Zhong, A unified Smith predictor approach for power system damping control using remote signals, IEEE Trans. on Control Systems Technology, vol. 13, no.6, 1063-1068, 2005.
19. Q.-C. Zhong, L. Hobson, M.G. Jayne. Classical control of the neutral point in 4-wire 3-phase DC-AC converters, Electrical Power Quality and Utilisation, vol. 11, no.2, 111-119, 2005.
20. Q.-C. Zhong, J-spectral factorization of regular para-Hermitian transfer matrices,  Automatica, vol.41, no.7, 1289-1293, 2005.
21. Q.-C. Zhong, On distributed delay in linear control laws. Part II: Rational implementations inspired from the d-operator . IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control, vol. 50, no.5, 729-734, 2005.
22. Q.-C. Zhong and D. Rees, Control of uncertain LTI systems based on an uncertainty and disturbance estimator, ASME J. Dyn. Syst., Meas., Control, vol.126, no.4, 905-910, 2004.
23. Q.-C. Zhong and G. Weiss, A unified Smith predictor based on the spectral decomposition of the plant, Int. J. of Control, vol. 77, no.15, pp.1362-1371, 2004.
24. Q.-C. Zhong. On distributed delay in linear control laws. Part I: Discrete-delay implementations, IEEE Trans. Automatic Control, vol. 49, no.11, pp.2074-2080, 2004.
25. Q.-C. Zhong and C.-C. Hang, Control of processes with dead time and input constraints using control signal shaping, IEE Proc. Control Theory & Applications, vol. 151, no.4, pp.473-480, 2004.
26. G. Weiss, Q.-C. Zhong, T. Green and J. Liang, H-infinity repetitive control of DC-AC converters in micro-grids, IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics, vol. 19, pp.219-230, 2004.
27. L. Mirkin and Q.-C. Zhong, 2DOF Controller parametrization for systems with a single I/O delay, IEEE Trans. Automatic Control, vol. 48, no.11, pp. 1999-2004, 2003.
28. Q.-C. Zhong, Robust stability analysis of simple systems controlled over communication networks, Automatica, vol.39, no.7, pp. 1309-1312, 2003.
29. Q.-C. Zhong, On standard H-infinity control of processes with a single delay, IEEE Trans. Automatic Control, vol.48, no.6, pp. 1097-1103, 2003.
30. Q.-C. Zhong, Frequency domain solution to the delay-type Nehari problem, Automatica, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 499-508, 2003.
31. Q.-C. Zhong, H-infinity control of dead-time systems based on a transformation, Automatica, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 361-366, 2003.
32. Q.-C. Zhong, Control of integral processes with dead time. Part 3: Dead-beat disturbance response, IEEE Trans. Automatic Control, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 153-159, 2003.
33. G. Meinsma, L. Mirkin and Q.-C. Zhong, Control of systems with I/O delay via reduction to a one-block problem, IEEE Trans. Automatic Control, vol. 47, no.11, pp.1890-1895, 2002.
34. Q.-C. Zhong and L. Mirkin, Control of integral processes with dead time. Part 2: Quantitative analysis, IEE Proc. Control Theory & Applications, vol. 149, no. 4, pp. 291-296, 2002.
35. Q.-C. Zhong, J.E. Normey-Rico, Control of integral processes with dead time. Part 1: Disturbance-observer based 2DOF control scheme, IEE Proc. Control Theory Applications, vol. 149, no. 4, pp. 285-290, 2002.
36. Q.-C. Zhong and H.-X. Li, Two-degree-of-freedom PID-type controller with Smith principle for processes with dead-time, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, vol. 41, no.10, pp. 2448-2454, 2002.
37. Q.-C. Zhong, J.Y. Xie and Q. Jia, Time-delay-filter-based dead-beat control of process with dead time, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, vol.39, no.6, pp. 2024-2028, 2000.
38. Q.-C. Zhong and J.Y. Xie, Robust Smith predictive controller for processes with inverse response, Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University, vol. E-4, no.2, pp. 10-16, 1999.