Experiment No.

2 Temperature Control System

OBJECTIVE:
To obtain the process reaction curve and hence, design controllers for temperature control system.

APPARATUS REQUIRED:
Signal reference source, Digital Voltmeter, PID Controller, Plant comprising Heater and Fan, DC Supply (or AC
Supply with in-built rectifier), Stopwatch

THE PROCESS TO BE CONTROLLED

It is an oven housed in a painted box in which a resistive heater heats up a small piece of aluminum.
Accordingly, the temperature sensor senses the rise in temperature of the aluminum strip and the
corresponding signal is converted by the electronic signal. The processed signals are compared with a
reference level and an error signal is produced at the controller input. There is a time lag produced
due to the distance between the heating element and the sensing point. The process is in the form of
an oven having a 9 pin D type connector.
To accurately control process temperature without extensive operator involvement, a temperature
control system relies upon a controller, which accepts a temperature sensor such as a thermocouple
or RTD as input. It compares the actual temperature to the desired control temperature, or set point,
and provides an output to a control element. E.g. DT-670 Silicon Diode at 1.4 K

CONNECTION DIAGRAM:

Procedure

The experiment can be divided into two sections. The first section involves determining the process reaction curve
of the plant (i.e. the open loop response of the plant in the absence of any controller) while the second would
involve designing controllers (viz. P, PI, PID) for the temperature control system using Ziegler-Nichols Tuning
method.
Part I – To determine the process reaction curve

1. The oven (which acts as the plant) is connected to the setup and power is switched on.
2. Since this part has to be carried out in the absence of any controller, the integrator is taken out of the
circuit by keeping the “I ON” switch towards off (which also removes the feedback path, making the
system open loop) while the differentiator is taken out of the circuit by keeping the corresponding D
control knob at zero.
Proportional gain is set at a certain fixed value (say dial setting=5 for the P Control knob).The value of
proportional gain won’t affect the process reaction curve of the open loop system.
3. Switch on the power. Note the temperature of the oven side by selecting the temperature switch to OVEN
side.
4. Select the temperature selector to SET POINT side and adjust the set point temperature to a value about
20 degrees higher than the Oven temperature just noticed. This set point temperature would act as
reference temperature for the system.
5. Select the temperature switch to OVEN side again. Switch ON the heater and start the stop watch
simultaneously. Note the oven temperature at intervals of 5 seconds.
6. Plot the curve between oven temperature and time. Find out the values of lag time (L) and time constant
(T) from this curve as explained in the theory.

Once the Lag time (L) and time constant (T) have been determined from the process characteristic, we can now
proceed onto designing the controller which would minimize the steady state error thereby improving the system
response.

INFLECTION POINT

Part 2 – To design controllers for the system

Zeigler and Nichols obtained the values of Kp, Ti and Td according to the formula given below

Type of Controller Kp Ti Td
P T/L Infinity 0

PI 0.9T/L L/0.33 0
PID 1.2T/L 2L 0.5L

Note: Make sure that after each controller design the heater is switched off and brought to its initial temperature
by switching on the fan.

I. P Control

1. Switch off the heater and I control (by means of I ON switch). Set the D control to zero. This leaves
only P control in the circuit.
2. Select the temperature switch to SET POINT side and adjust the reference temperature to 60 C.
3. Select the temperature switch to OVEN side and note the current temperature (this would act as
the initial temperature when the experiment is repeated for different values of K p).
4. Set P control at midway i.e. Kp = 10 (i.e. dial setting = 5).
5. Switch in the heater and start the stop watch simultaneously. Note down the oven temperature at
intervals of 10 seconds till the system reaches a stable value.
6. Once the temperature becomes stable, switch off the heater and switch on the fan to decrease
the temperature. When the temperature reaches the initial value (noted earlier), switch off the
fan.
7. Repeat the above steps for KP=16 (i.e. dial setting = 8) and KP=20(maximum i.e. dial setting = 10).
8. From the readings taken in the above steps, plot the curve between oven temperature and time
for different values of Kp.

II. PI Control

1. Compute the values for Kp and Ki using the values of Lag time (L) and time constant (T) calculated
in part 1 of this experiment and the Ziegler-Nichols PID Tuning table given in the theory section.
Note that the Ziegler-Nichols tuning method computes the value of T i and Ki = Kp/Ti
2. Select temperature switch to SET POINT side and adjust the set point temperature to 60 C.
3. Select the temperature switch to OVEN and note the initial temperature. Set the P and I control
knobs to the values calculated in step 1.
4. Switch on the heater and start the stop watch simultaneously. Note down the oven temperature
at intervals of 10 seconds till the system reaches a stable temperature.
5. From the readings taken above, plot the curve between temperature and time.

Note: The settling time for PI control might become too large, thus one can take a 5% error criteria
when plotting the curve.
 III. PID Control

1. Compute the values of Kp, Ki and Kd using the values of Lag time (L) and time constant (T)
calculated in part 1 of this experiment and the Ziegler-Nichols tuning method. Note that the
Ziegler-Nichols tuning method computes the value of T i , Td and Ki = Kp/Ti Kd=KpxTd
2. Select the temperature switch to SET POINT side and adjust the set point temperature to 60 C.
3. Select the temperature switch to OVEN side and note the initial temperature. Set the P, I and D
control knobs according the values found out in step 1.
4. Switch on the heater and start the stop watch simultaneously. Note the value of oven
temperature at intervals of 10 seconds.
5. From the readings taken in the above step, plot the curve between oven temperature and time.

Observations and Graphs

1. Process Reaction Curve

Set Point Temperature: ________________ Initial Oven Temperature: _________________

Time Oven Temperature Time Oven Temperature (Celsius)

(seconds) (Celsius) (seconds)
0 95
5 100
10 105
15 110
20 115
25 120
30 125
35 130
40 135
45 140
50 145
60 150
65 155
70 160
75 165
80 170
85 175
90 180
Graph for Process Reaction Curve
 2. P Control

Set Point Temperature: _________________ Initial oven temperature: ___________________

For Kp = 10 For Kp = 16 For K p = 20

Oven Oven Oven

Time (seconds) Temperature Time (seconds) Temperature Time (seconds) Temperature
(Celsius) (Celsius) (Celsius)
0 0 0
10 10 10
20 20 20
30 30 30
40 40 40
50 50 50
60 60 60
70 70 70
80 80 80
90 90 90
100 100 100
110 110 110
120 120 120
130 130 130
140 140 140
150 150 150
160 160 160
170 170 170
180 180 180
190 190 190
200 200 200
210 210 210
220 220 220
230 230 230
240 240 240
Graph for P control
3. PI Control

Set Point Temperature: _________________ Initial Oven temperature: ____________________

Calculated Values of
Kp = _____________ T i = ______________ K i = Kp/Ti __________________

Time Oven Temperature (Celsius) Time Oven Temperature (Celsius)

(seconds) (seconds)
0 125
5 130
10 135
15 140
20 145
25 150
30 155
35 160
40 165
45 170
50 175
60 180
65 185
70 190
75 195
80 200
85 205
90 210
95 215
100 220
105 225
110 230
115 235
120 240
Graph for PI control
4. PID Control

Set Point Temperature: _________________ Initial Oven temperature: ____________________

Calculated Values of
Kp = _____________ T i = ______________ T D = _________________

Ki = Kp/Ti = __________________ K D = Kp x TD = ________________

Time Oven Temperature (Celsius) Time Oven Temperature (Celsius)

(seconds) (seconds)
0 125
5 130
10 135
15 140
20 145
25 150
30 155
35 160
40 165
45 170
50 175
60 180
65 185
70 190
75 195
80 200
85 205
90 210
95 215
100 220
105 225
110 230
115 235
120 240
Graph for PID control
Conclusion

From the above experiment, we can conclude that, the response of the temperature control system (i.e. speed of
response, stability and accuracy) can be improved by adding a controller (P, PI or PID).
1. If only a P controller is present in the circuit, then the system would always show some steady state error.
However upon increasing the value of the proportional gain, the steady state error would decrease.
2. When a PI controller is used, the steady state error reduces significantly but the overshoot and settling
time increase because of increased oscillations.
3. When a PID controller is used, the oscillation amplitude decreases slightly thus the settling time reduces.

KNOB POSITION INTEGRAL GAIN

0 0.8
1 1.0
2 1.5
3 2.5
4 5.0
5 7.2
6 9.5
7 11.2

8 14.0

9 18.0

10 21.0

KNOB POSITION DERIVATIVE

GAIN
0 0
1 0.5
2 1
3 1.5
4 2
5 2.5
6 3.0
7 3.5

8 4

9 4.5

10 5