Design of an Intelligent NPID Controller Based on Genetic Algorithm for Disturbance Rejection in Single Integrating Process with Time Delay

Abstract

The integrating process with time delay (IPTD) is a fundamentally unstable open-loop system due to poles at the origin of the transfer function, and designing controllers with satisfactory control performance is very difficult because of the associated time delay, which is a nonlinear element. Therefore, this study focuses on the design of an intelligent proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller to improve the regulatory response performance to disturbance in an IPTD, and addresses problems related to optimally tuning each parameter of the controller with a real coded genetic algorithm (RCGA). Each gain of the nonlinear PID (NPID) controller consists of a product of the gains of the linear PID controller and a simple nonlinear function. Each of these nonlinear functions changes the gains in the controller to on line by nonlinearly scaling the error signal. A lead-lag compensator or first-order filter is also added to the controller to mitigate noise, which is a disadvantage of ideal derivative action. The parameters in the controller are optimally tuned by minimizing the integral of time-weighted absolute error (ITAE) using a RCGA. The proposed method is compared with three other methods through simulation to verify its effectiveness.