Enhanced Stability Regions for Model Predictive Control of Nonlinear Process Systems**Partial financial support by NSERC and McMaster Advanced Control Consortium is gratefully acknowledged.

This work considers the problem of predictive control of nonlinear process systems subject to input constraints. Lyapunov-based tools are used to develop control-law independent characterizations of the stability region and this characterization is exploited via the constraints handling capabilities of model predicative controllers to expand on the set of initial conditions for which closed-loop stability can be achieved. The utilization of …