SoMMME

Department of Mechanical Engineering

EMG 2410: Control Engineering II

Basic Control Actions

James K. Kimotho
 SoMMME
Department of Mechanical Engineering

EMG 2410 Control Engineering II

Content

1. Controllers: Basic control actions

2. Design of controllers
3. State space control
4. Block Diagrams, State Space Representation
5. Introduction to non-linear control system

Practicals:
1. Design of PID Controllers – Simulation
2. Amatrol Motor Control Basics (PID Control)

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Recall – Definitions

Control: is a process of making system variables to conform to

desired values such that the desired performance
characteristics are realized.
– Variables may be displacement, speed, force, torque,
temperature, etc.
Plant: The system to be controlled is referred to as plant. A
plant may be a piece of equipment, or a set of machine
elements functioning together, the purpose of which is to
perform a particular operation.
Sensor: Is a device which measures the quantity to be
controlled.
Actuator: Is a component of a machine that is responsible for
moving and controlling a mechanism or system. It receives
control signal and uses energy to affect the plant.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Recall – Definitions

Controlled variable: is the quantity or condition that is

measured and controlled.
– The manipulated variable is the quantity or condition that is varied
by the controller to affect the value of the controlled variable.
Disturbance: A disturbance is a signal that tends to adversely
affect the value of the output of a system.
– If a disturbance is generated within the system, it is called
internal, while an external disturbance is generated outside the
system and is an input.
Feedback control: refers to an operation in which the output
signal is sampled and then fed back to the input to form an
error signal that drives the system. In the presence of
disturbances, feedback control tends to reduce the difference
between the output of a system and some reference input
based on this difference.
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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Automatic Control
What is Automatic Control?

Automatic control is the technology used to control processes

in order to achieve desired behaviors.
We observe, and mathematically describe, various
phenomenons in our environment and we use this knowledge
to control these phenomenons.
Example – automobile cruise control
– From mechanics we have for instance obtained equations, which
describe the velocity of a car moving up an inclined plane.
– In control theory the corresponding equations can be used to
device an automatic cruise controller for automobiles, granting
them constant speed, despite variations in the inclination of the
road.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Automatic Control
Examples

The auto pilots of aircrafts and motorships are devices

providing the vessels with constant bearings, despite
disturbances in form of winds and currents.
To keep a constant temperature in buildings, despite
variations in the outdoor temperature and the number of
persons in the building, is a classic control problem.
In the process industry, e.g., in pulp mills, hundreds—or
even thousands of controllers maintain desired pressures,
flows, temperatures, concentrations and levels.
Modern cars contain many control systems for e.g., cruise
control, anti-lock brake systems (ABS), power steering,
emission reduction and air conditioning.
Cameras contain control systems for e.g., auto focus and
automatic exposure control.
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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Basic Control Actions

Industrial controllers may be classified according to their

control actions as:
1. Two-position or on/off controllers
2. Proportional (P) controllers
3. Integral (I) controllers
4. Proportional-plus-integral (PI) controllers
5. Proportional-plus-derivative (PD) controllers
6. Proportional-plus-integral-plus-derivative (PID) controllers

PID - control is the most widely applied controller design for

SISO systems because it can cope well with most cases
encountered in practice.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Basic Control Actions

Most industrial controllers use electricity or pressurized fluid

such as oil or air as power sources.
Controllers may also be classified according to the kind of
energy employed in the operation, such as
– pneumatic controllers,
– hydraulic controllers, or
– electrical controllers.
The kind of controller to use must be decided based on the
nature of the plant and the operating conditions, including such
considerations as safety, cost, availability, reliability, accuracy,
weight, and size.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Basic Control Actions

Elements of a control system

Reference
Input
(Set Point)
Amplifier Actuator Plant

Actuating error
signal

Sensor

An automatic controller compares the actual value of the plant

output with the reference input (desired value), determines the
deviation, and produces a control signal that will reduce the
deviation to zero or to a small value.
The way the automatic controller produces the control signal is
called the control action.
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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Basic Control Actions

The controller detects the actuating error signal, which is usually at

a very low power level, and amplifies it to a sufficiently high level.
The output of an automatic controller is fed to an actuator, such as a
pneumatic drive or valve, a hydraulic motor, or an electric motor.
The actuator is a power device that produces the input to the plant
according to the control signal so that the output signal will
approach the reference input signal.
The sensor or measuring element is a device that converts the
output variable into another suitable variable, such as a
displacement, pressure, or voltage, that can be used to compare the
output to the reference input signal.
– This element is in the feedback path of the closed-loop system.
The set point of the controller must be converted to a reference
input with the same units as the feedback signal from the sensor or
measuring element.
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Department of Mechanical Engineering

The on/off Controller

The on/off controller is the simplest imaginable controller.

Its control signal 𝑢 is given by

where 𝑒 is the control error, i.e., the difference between the

setpoint 𝑟 and the measurement signal 𝑦.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

The on/off Controller

A drawback with this controller is that it gives rise to

oscillations in the control loop.
For the controller to maintain a small difference between
measurement signal and setpoint, it must constantly switch the
control signal between the two levels 𝑢max and 𝑢min .
If we for instance control the speed of a car by means of the
gas pedal, while it can only take on the values “no gas” and
“full gas”, we will need to switch between these two values in
order to keep the average speed at the setpoint.
This is one way of driving, but the control action is poor.
Examples: Domestic water level controller, electric oven,
industrial furnaces.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

The generalized control problem

The control problem can be stated as:

– The control action 𝑢(𝑡) will be such that the controlled output 𝑐(𝑡)
will be equal to the reference input 𝑟1 (𝑡) for all values of time,
irrespective of the value of the disturbance input 𝑟2 (𝑡).
In practice, there will always be transient errors, but the
transient period should be kept as small as possible.
It is usually possible to design the controller so that steady-
state errors are minimized, or ideally, eliminated.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Proportional Control – The P Part

For large control errors it may be feasible to either release or

fully depress the gas pedal.
Consequently, the on/off controller performs well for large
errors. The oscillations appear for small control errors and can
be reduced by e.g., decreasing the controller gain for small
control errors.
This can be achieved by introducing a proportional band or a P
controller.
In this case, the control action, or signal is proportional to the
error 𝑒(𝑡)

where 𝐾1 is the proportional gain constant.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Proportional Control
Proportional control of a first-order plant

The plant transfer function is

And the proportional control law becomes

The output is

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Proportional Control
Proportional control of a first-order plant

When 𝑟1 (𝑡) is a unit step, and 𝑟2 𝑡 = 0, the final value theorem

gives the steady-state response

Hence, for the system to have zero steady-state error,

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Proportional Control
Proportional control of a first-order plant

This can only happen if the open-loop gain constant 𝐾1 𝐾 is

infinity.
In practice this is not possible and therefore the proportional
control system will always produce steady-state errors.
These can be minimized by keeping the open-loop gain
constant 𝐾1 𝐾 as high as possible.
Since the closed-loop time-constant

Then maintaining 𝐾1 𝐾 at a high value will reduce the closed-

loop time constant and therefore improve the system transient
response.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Proportional Control
Proportional control of a first-order plant

Step response of a first-order plant using proportional control

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Proportional Control
Proportional control of a first-order plant

As the proportional gain increases,

– The closed-loop system remains stable;
– The steady-state error decreases;
– The response becomes faster;
– The sensitivity to noise increases.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Proportional Control
Example

Set 𝑇 = 1, 𝑟1 = 1, 𝑟2 = −0.8, noise power= 1 × 10−5

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Department of Mechanical Engineering

Thank You
for
Your Kind Attention!
Dr.-Ing. James Kuria Kimotho Department of Mechanical Engineering
[email protected] JKUAT
P.O. Box 62000-00200
Tel: +254791872389 Nairobi