{
  "abstract": "In coal-fired power plants, the coordinated control of boiler–turbine systems (BTSs) is required to track grid load dispatch instructions in real time while maintaining stable main steam pressure. Nevertheless, a BTS is affected by input constraints, external disturbances and model uncertainties, making it challenging for existing control schemes to stabilize the system within a fixed time. To tackle this issue, a fixed-time fractional-order sliding mode coordinated control (FTFOSMCC) strategy is put forward for the BTS. Firstly, a novel fixed-time fractional-order sliding mode disturbance observer (FTFOSMDO) is constructed by merging Riemann–Liouville fractional calculus with the fixed-time stability theory; the proposed observer is theoretically proven to drive the disturbance estimation error to zero within a fixed settling time that does not depend on the initial observation error. Secondly, the FTFOSMCC controller incorporates the Caputo fractional-order sliding surface, a novel variable exponential power reaching law, the state-of-the-art anti-windup technique, disturbance-observer-based feedforward compensation technique and fixed-time stability theorem, guaranteeing active suppression of actuator saturation and fixed-time stability of the closed-loop control system by Lyapunov’s theorem. Thirdly, simulations on a 300 MW subcritical BTS validate the exceptional tracking accuracy, disturbance rejection capability and robustness of the proposed strategy with the reduction of 33–90% in maximum tracking error, 12–98% in cumulative error, and 11–98% in time-weighted error compared to tuned PID and integer-order disturbance-observer-based sliding mode controllers.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "School of IoT Engineering, Wuxi University, Wuxi 214105, China",
    "Jiangsu Provincial University Key Laboratory of Vehicle-Road Multimodal Perception and Control, Wuxi University, Wuxi 214105, China"
  ],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "name": "Lei Kong",
      "orcid": "0009-0009-4622-9496"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "name": "Tao Teng"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "name": "Xuan Yang"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "name": "Quan Wang",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-0258-7629"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/1c6kge940q0ga.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.3390/fractalfract10100712",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "1c6kge940q0ga",
  "issns": [
    "2504-3110"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://www.mdpi.com/2504-3110/10/10/712",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "2207|Adaptive Control of Nonlinear Systems"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7221103854",
  "pdf_url": null,
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-09",
  "publisher": "MDPI AG",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/1c6kge940q0ga.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:18:32Z",
      "native_id": "10.3390/fractalfract10100712",
      "source": "crossref",
      "url": "https://www.mdpi.com/2504-3110/10/10/712"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "mathematics",
      "origin": "issn:2504-3110",
      "subfield": "analysis-pdes"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Fixed-Time Fractional-Order Sliding Mode Coordinated Control for Boiler–Turbine Systems with Disturbances and Input Constraints",
  "title_text": "Fixed-Time Fractional-Order Sliding Mode Coordinated Control for Boiler–Turbine Systems with Disturbances and Input Constraints",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:18:32Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/1c6kge940q0ga",
  "venue": "Fractal and Fractional",
  "versions": []
}