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Understanding PID Control and Loop Tuning Fundamentals - Control Engineering PDF

The document discusses PID (proportional-integral-derivative) control and loop tuning fundamentals. It explains that a PID controller uses feedback to correct discrepancies between a measured process variable and desired setpoint. It weighs proportional, integral, and derivative terms to compute corrective efforts. Loop tuning selects values for tuning parameters (P, TI, TD) to eliminate errors quickly without excess fluctuation. Ziegler-Nichols developed techniques for determining these values based on a process's reaction to a step change in controller output. Tuning depends on process characteristics like time constants and lags.

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234 views

Understanding PID Control and Loop Tuning Fundamentals - Control Engineering PDF

The document discusses PID (proportional-integral-derivative) control and loop tuning fundamentals. It explains that a PID controller uses feedback to correct discrepancies between a measured process variable and desired setpoint. It weighs proportional, integral, and derivative terms to compute corrective efforts. Loop tuning selects values for tuning parameters (P, TI, TD) to eliminate errors quickly without excess fluctuation. Ziegler-Nichols developed techniques for determining these values based on a process's reaction to a step change in controller output. Tuning depends on process characteristics like time constants and lags.

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rafik1995
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Understanding PID control and loop tuning fundamentals | Control Engin... http://www.controleng.com/single-article/understanding-pid-control-an...

Understanding PID control and loop tuning fundamentals


PID loop tuning may not be a hard science, but it’s not magic either. Here are some tuning tips that work.
Vance VanDoren, PhD
07/26/2016

A "control loop" is a feedback


mechanism that attempts to correct
discrepancies between a measured
process variable and the desired
setpoint. A special-purpose computer
known as the "controller" applies the
necessary corrective efforts via an
actuator that can drive the process
variable up or down. A home furnace
uses a basic feedback controller to
turn the heat up or down if the
temperature measured by the
thermostat is too low or too high.

For industrial applications, a


proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller tracks the error between the process variable and the setpoint, the integral of
recent errors, and the derivative of the error signal. It computes its next corrective effort from a weighted sum of those three
terms, then applies the results to the process, and awaits the next measurement. It repeats this measure-decide-actuate loop
until the error is eliminated. [subhead]

PID basics

A PID controller using the ideal or International Society of Automation (ISA) standard form of the PID algorithm computes its
output CO(t) according to the formula shown in Figure 1. PV(t) is the process variable measured at time t, and the error e(t) is
the difference between the process variable and the setpoint. The PID formula weights the proportional term by a factor of P,
the integral term by a factor of P/TI, and the derivative term by a factor of P.TD where P is the controller gain, TI is the integral
time, and TD is the derivative time.

That terminology bears some explaining. "Gain" refers to the percentage by


which the error signal will gain or lose strength as it passes through the
controller en route to becoming part of the controller's output. A PID controller
with a high gain will tend to generate particularly aggressive corrective efforts.

The "integral time" refers to a hypothetical sequence of events where the error
starts at zero, then abruptly jumps to a fixed value. Such an error would cause
an instantaneous response from the controller's proportional term and a
response from the integral term that starts at zero and increases steadily. The
time required for the integral term to catch up to the unchanging proportional
term is the integral time TI. A PID controller with a long integral time is more
heavily weighted toward proportional action than integral action.

Similarly, the "derivative time" TD is a measure of the relative influence of the


derivative term in the PID formula. If the error were to start at zero and begin
increasing at a fixed rate, the proportional term would start at zero, while the
derivative term assumes a fixed value. The proportional term would then increase steadily until it catches up with the
derivative term at the end of the derivative time. A PID controller with a long derivative time is more heavily weighted toward
derivative action than proportional action.

Historical note

The first feedback controllers included just the proportional term. For mathematical reasons that only became apparent later
on, a P-only controller tends to drive the error downward to a small, but non-zero, value and then quit. Operators observing
this phenomenon would manually increase the controller's output until the last vestiges of the error were eliminated. They
called this operation "resetting" the controller.

When the integral term was introduced, operators observed that it would tend to perform the reset operation automatically.
That is, the controller would augment its proportional action just enough to eliminate the error entirely. Hence, integral action
was originally called "automatic reset" and remains labeled that way on some PID controllers to this day. The derivative term
was invented shortly thereafter and was described, accurately enough, as "rate control."

Tricky business

Loop tuning is the art of selecting values for the tuning parameters P, TI, and TD so that the controller will be able to eliminate
an error quickly without causing the process variable to fluctuate excessively. That's easier said than done.

Consider a car's cruise controller, for example. It can accelerate the car to a desired cruising speed, but not instantaneously.
The car's inertia causes a delay between the time that the controller engages the accelerator and the time that the car's
speed reaches the setpoint. How well a PID controller performs depends in large part on such lags.

Suppose an overloaded car with an undersized engine suddenly starts up a steep hill. The ensuing error between the car's
actual and desired speeds would cause the controller's derivative and proportional actions to kick in immediately. The
controller would begin to accelerate the car, but only as fast as the lag allows.

After a while, the integral action would also begin to contribute to the controller's output and eventually come to dominate it
because the error decreases so slowly when the lag time is long, and a sustained error is what drives the integral action. But
exactly when that would happen and how dominant the integral action would become thereafter would depend on the severity
of the lag and the relative sizes of the controller's integral and derivative times.

This simple example demonstrates a fundamental principle of PID tuning. The best choice for each of the tuning parameters
P, TI, and TD depends on the values of the other two as well as the behavior of the controlled process. Furthermore,
modifying the tuning of any one term affects the performance of the others because the modified controller affects the
process, and the process in turn affects the controller.

Ziegler-Nichols tuning

How can a control engineer designing a PID loop


determine the values for P, TI, and TD that will work
best for a particular application? John G. Ziegler and
Nathaniel B. Nichols of Taylor Instruments (now part
of ABB) addressed that question in 1942 when they
published two loop tuning techniques that remain
popular to this day.

Their open loop technique is based on the results of


a bump or step test for which the controller is taken
offline and manually forced to increase its output
abruptly. A strip chart of the process variable's
subsequent trajectory is known as the "reaction
curve" (see Figure 2).

A sloped line drawn tangent to the reaction curve at


its steepest point shows how fast the process
reacted to the step change in the controller's output.
The inverse of this line's slope is the process time constant T, which measures the severity of the lag.

The reaction curve also shows how long it took for the process to demonstrate its initial reaction to the step (the dead time d)
1 sur 1 and how much the process variable increased relative to the size of the step (the process gain K). By trial-and-error, Ziegler 09/08/2016 14:54

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