Probabilistic robustness for compressor controls in transient pipeline networks

Uncertainty plays a crucial role in modeling and optimization of complex systems across various applications. In this paper, uncertain gas transport through pipeline networks is considered and a novel strategy to measure the robustness of deterministically computed compressor and valve controls, the probabilistic robustness, is presented. Initially, an optimal control for a deterministic gas network problem is computed such that the total control cost is minimized with respect to box constraints for the pressure. Subsequently, the model is perturbed by uncertain gas demands. The probability, that the uncertain gas pressures- based on the a priori deterministic optimal control- satisfy the box constraints, is evaluated. Moreover, buffer zones are introduced in order to tighten the pressure bounds in the deterministic scenario. Optimal controls for the deterministic scenario with buffer zones are also applied to the uncertain scenario, allowing to analyze the impact of the buffer zones on the probabilistic robustness of the optimal controls. For the computation of the probability, we apply a kernel density estimator based on samples of the uncertain pressure at chosen locations. In order to reduce the computational effort of generating the samples, we combine the kernel density estimator approach with a stochastic collocation method which approximates the pressure at the chosen locations in the stochastic space. Finally, we discuss generalizations of the probabilistic robustness check and we present numerical results for a gas network taken from the public gas library.