Heating up Antarctic Plants - Preliminary Results of a Thermal Actuator for Antarctic Bioindicators in a Context of the Climate Change

Colobanthus Quitensis and Deschampsia Antartica are the only native vascular species of plants in the Antarctic region and are a source of interest in the climate change studies. These plants have been studied for decades and recognized as bioindicators of the climate change. The article presents preliminary studies and results of a thermal actuator, which is going to be applied in a climate change studies. The elaborated, far infrared actuator together with a control system maintains the temperature of the Antarctic plant certain delta above the ambient temperature. Since the heat transfer is based on infrared radiation a thermal model is introduced, where the parameters of the model are determined empirically approximating it using a 1-st order dynamical system. Once determined, the sytem model paremeters help to design the control strategies: Control On-Off (1) and Control PID (proportional–integral–derivative) (2). As a result we obtain that the control PID maintains the objects temperature with major stability than On-Off, what makes it preferable in the final application. The future works involve modeling ambiental perturbation, which affects the system and determination thermal parameters of the Antarctic plants.