Benchmark Construction with Application to PID Controller Design and Implementation

Abstract

This paper addresses the issues of modelling, simulation, design, and controller implementation in an Industrial Control course. The motivation for it comes from the fact that, differently from the plants used in first courses on control systems, which usually have fast step response, plants suitable for Industrial Control courses have slow step response. The consequence of this fact is that the experiments necessary to carry out the model parameter identification take a long time to be performed. This problem can be circumvented by using a benchmark plant to resemble the behaviour of the physical system. In this paper a benchmark is constructed from a real system, having as model, a first order system with time delay, where the time delay and the time constant are both varying. Controller implementation is carried out using the PID function of a programmable logic controller (PLC).