Journal of Process Control 15 (2005) 371382

www.elsevier.com/locate/jprocont

A simple method for detecting valve stiction in oscillating

control loops
Ashish Singhal *, Timothy I. Salsbury
Controls Research Group, Johnson Controls, Inc., 507 E. Michigan Street, Milwaukee, WI 53202, USA
Received 30 June 2004; received in revised form 7 October 2004; accepted 7 October 2004

Abstract
This paper presents a simple and new method for detecting valve stiction in an oscillating control loop. The method is based on
the calculation of areas before and after the peak of an oscillating signal. The proposed method is intuitive, requires very little computational eort, and is easy to implement online. Analytical results are derived to show the theoretical basis of the new method and
eld results are presented to show its eectiveness on real world control loops.

2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Control; Stiction; Oscillation diagnosis; Valves (mechanical); Actuators

1. Introduction
Surveys in the process industry have revealed that almost 30% of control loops are oscillating [1,2]. Oscillating loops are undesirable because they increase
variability in product quality, accelerate equipment
wear, and may cause oscillations in other interacting
loops. Thus, detection, diagnosis, and correction of
oscillations are important activities in control loop
supervision and maintenance.
Some common causes of oscillations are (i) external
oscillating disturbances, (ii) poor controller tuning, (iii)
nonlinearities in the actuator/plant such as static and/
or dynamic nonlinearities, and stiction, or (iv) a combination of these. In this paper, we focus on distinguishing
oscillations caused by valve stiction from those caused
by poor loop tuning, and assume that oscillations have

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 414 524 4688/4660; fax: +1 414
524 5810.
E-mail addresses: ashish.singhal@jci.com (A. Singhal), timothy.i.
salsbury@jci.com (T.I. Salsbury).

0959-1524/$ - see front matter
2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jprocont.2004.10.001

been detected by other methods such as those described

in [3,4].
A number of researchers have studied the valve stiction problem and suggested methods for detecting it.
Horch and Isaksson [5] presented a fairly complex
method for detecting stiction by calculating log-likelihood ratios for multiple models. Their method requires
knowledge of the nonlinear plant and stiction models
and extended Kalman ltering. Stenman et al. [6]
also proposed a complicated method based on multimodel mode estimation and change detection. Their
method requires identifying time-series models and
performing optimization to obtain the log-likelihood
ratio.
Horch presented two more methods for detecting
stiction in oscillating loops [7,8]. The rst method detected valve stiction by analyzing the cross-correlation
function (CCF) between the controller output (u) and
the plant output (y). He proposed that a sticking valve
results in a phase lag of 90 (odd CCF) between u and
y, while an aggressive controller or an oscillating disturbance results in a phase lag of 180 (even CCF). The
phase lag is 180 for an aggressive controller when the

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A. Singhal, T.I. Salsbury / Journal of Process Control 15 (2005) 371382

Valve stiction

Aggressive control

A1

control error

control error

A1
____
~1
A2

A
1
____
>1
A2

time

time

Fig. 1. Control error signal shapes for valve stiction and aggressive control.

loop cycles due to controller output saturation.

However, when stiction is present and the controller
output is not saturated, the phase lag can lie between
90 and 180 for a PI controller.
Horchs second method detected the dierences
between the shapes of the signal oscillating because of
stiction and aggressive control using probability distributions. The method involved calculating ltered derivatives of the plant output and then analyzing the shape
of the probability distribution for the derivative signal
by either performing a nonlinear t to two probability
distributions (one for stiction, and one for aggressive
control/sinusoidal disturbance), or manually observing
the shapes of the two distributions. Although ltering
the plant output signal was recommended before calculating derivatives, we found that even after ltering, the
calculation of derivatives amplied moderate amounts
of noise and blurred the distinction between the shapes
of the two probability distributions.
Choudhury et al. [9] used bicoherence to detect valve
stiction by identifying non-Gaussian and nonlinear components in the signal. They presented simulation results
for detecting nonlinearities in the signals using a stiction
model [10] and also detected signal nonlinearities in
industrial data. A manual inspection of the controlled
variablecontroller output (pvop) plot was then required to determine the cause of the nonlinearity.
According to Choudhury et al., nonlinearity in the signal could be present because of stiction, dead-zones,
hysteresis in the control valve, or the nonlinear nature
of the process itself. Thus, the bicoherence test detected
the presence of signal nonlinearities, and not specically
stiction.
Gerry and Ruel have published several papers on
detecting and measuring valve stiction by manually
inspecting the shapes of the control error and the controller output signals during sustained oscillations [11
13]. They suggested that the controller output would
be a saw-tooth or triangular wave for a sticking valve
and a sinusoid for an aggressive controller. Additionally, a sticking valve was assumed to produce a

square-shaped control error signal, while an aggressive controller produced a sinusoidal signal. Ruel also
proposed a test to quantify the amount of stiction by
putting the controller in manual mode, and then executing a series of small step-changes in the controller output until the controlled variable showed a change in
its steady-state value.
Our new automated method is also based on distinguishing between the shapes of the signals caused by
an aggressive controller and a sticking valve using the
ratio of the areas before and after the peak of the control error signal 1 as shown in Fig. 1. The idea is simple,
easy to implement online, and requires little computational eort.
This paper presents the proposed method in Section
2. The stiction model of Choudhury et al. [10] is discussed in Section 3 and a theoretical analysis of the
method is presented in Section 4. We focus on presenting a theoretical framework for analyzing oscillations
caused by stiction in closed loops and illustrate the idea
using a simplied stiction model and popular plant models. The same framework could be used to analyze oscillations with more complicated models.
A comparison between the results obtained using a
simplied stiction model and the complete Choudhury
model is presented in Section 5. Practical considerations
are discussed in Section 6 and a eld result is presented
in Section 7.

2. Proposed method
For self-regulating plants 2 with a monotone step-response, aggressive control usually results in a sinusoidal
control error signal, while for a sticking valve, the signal
typically follows exponential decay and rise as shown in

The control error is the dierence between the setpoint and the
process variable being controlled.
2
Plant with all left-half plane poles.

A. Singhal, T.I. Salsbury / Journal of Process Control 15 (2005) 371382

Fig. 1. The reason for this behavior is that while the

plant input is continuous for aggressive control (except
when the controller output is saturated), valve stiction
results in a discontinuous plant input that closely resembles a rectangular pulse signal.
The new stiction detection methodology distinguishes
between the shapes of the two signals in Fig. 1 by calculating the ratio of the areas before and after the peaks.
This quantity is called R and is dened as
R,

A1
:
A2

The decision rule is summarized as

R > 1 ) Sticking valve;
R
1 ) Aggressive control
The proposed idea is very easy to implement online so
that stiction detection can be performed by a eld controller at faster sampling rates compared to downloading and analyzing data at an operator workstation.
Also, online implementation in a eld controller would
result in reduced trac on a control network.
The assumptions for using the proposed method to
detect stiction are: (1) the controller output is not cycling from one saturation limit to the other, and (2)
the oscillations in the control loop are not caused by
an external periodic disturbance. Violation of these
assumptions can result in R > 1 even when stiction is
absent.
The rst assumption can be veried by observing if
the controller output hits saturation limits. Satisfying
the second assumption requires overriding and holding
the controller output at its current value and again
detecting the presence of sustained oscillations. If the
control error signal still exhibits oscillations, an external
periodic disturbance is likely to be causing them.

3. Plant and stiction models

The proposed stiction detection method is designed

for self-regulating plants with monotone step-response.
These plants can be represented by the nth-order transfer function,
Gp

K p eLs
;
T 1 s 1T 2 s 1 . . . T n s 1

practice to approximate the nth-order transfer function

in Eq. (1) to rst-order for controller tuning. This
approximation results in the popular rst-order plus
time-delay (FOPTD) transfer function,
~

Gp

K p ehs
;
ss 1

where n is the plant order, Kp is the plant gain, L is the

delay in the plant, and Ti are time-constants of dierent
dynamic components. The delay, L, is the amount of
dead-time in the plant, i.e., the time during which there
is no plant response to an input change. It is common

where s is an approximation of the plant dynamics,

and ~h represents a combination of the pure delay (L)
and an apparent delay (h) caused by the higher order
dynamics.
It is important to distinguish between the true and
apparent time-delay in order to understand the stiction
model. First we present expressions for the apparent
time-delay and time-constant for an nth-order plant
and subsequently show the eect of apparent time-delay
on the stiction model.
In Eq. (1), the system gain can be set to unity without
loss of generality. Because the focus of this section is to
analyze the eect of the plants order and not its dierent
dynamic components, we set Ti = T (i = 1, . . . , n). This
simplication also reduces the number of free parameters in the nth-order model and allows us to derive analytical expressions for s and ~h. The nth-order plant now
becomes:
eLs
3
n:
Ts 1
strom and Hagglunds method [14] to calculate
We use A
~
s and h. Their method requires rst calculating the average residence time of the higher-order plant. The apparent time-delay is then calculated by nding the
intersection of the tangent drawn through the inection
point of the unit-step response with the time-axis. The
apparent time-constant is nally calculated by subtracting the apparent time-delay from the average residence
time. By following this procedure, the apparent timeconstant and time-delay for the nth-order plant described by Eq. (3) are calculated as
Gp

3.1. Plant model

373

6
s T6
41

1e


n1

nP
1
i0

n1i
i!

n1n1 en1

n1!

3
7
7
5

and


3
nP
1
n1i
1  en1
i!
6
7
i0
7:


h T6
n

1

n1
n1
4
5
2

n1 e
n1!

Adding the pure delay, L, to the apparent time-delay results in the eective time-delay ~h L h. We dene a
quantity k as the ratio of the eective time-delay to the
apparent time-constant:

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A. Singhal, T.I. Salsbury / Journal of Process Control 15 (2005) 371382

Table 1
k values for nth-order plants (L = 0)
n
k

1
0

2
0.16

3
0.37

4
0.55

5
0.72

6
0.88

7
1.03

~
h
:
6
s
The ratio k usually indicates the diculty of controla
large k means that the plant is more dicult to control
with a PI controller. The variation of k with n for plants
with zero pure-delay is presented in Table 1. The
eect of k on the inputoutput (I/O) characteristics of
a sticking valve will be discussed in the following
section.
k,

3.2. Stiction model

Understanding the type of oscillations caused by a
sticking valve in a control loop requires a good grasp
of the stick-slip phenomenon. Several researchers have
modeled stiction in mechanical systems and then analyzed the behavior of oscillations caused by stiction in
a closed loop. Armstrong-Helouvry et al. [15] presented
a comprehensive review of models, methods and control
of mechanical systems with friction. They list contributions from tribology, lubrication, physics and control.
Many researchers model friction as a combination of
static, coulomb and viscous friction and have analyzed
oscillations in position control systems with friction
[1518].
The disadvantage of physics-based models is that
they require several physical parameters such as the
amount of static, coulomb and viscous friction, spring
tension, system mass, etc. to model the process accurately. In most cases, calibrating these parameters is
not an easy task. Thus, Choudhury et al. [10] introduced
an empirical valve stiction model that has behavior similar to the physics-based models. Their empirical model
has only two parameters that are intuitive and easy to
dene. In this paper, we use the Choudhury model to
analyze valve-stiction in an oscillating control loop.
We also use a simplied form of the model to derive
analytical expressions and validate our approach, and
use numerical simulation to test the method with the full
model.
Choudhury et al. [10] developed an empirical model
for valve stiction that produces inputoutput (I/O)
behavior similar to that of more complicated physicsbased models. The I/O characteristics of a sticking control valve are presented in Fig. 2(a). For most plants
with k > 0, the I/O characteristics contain a deadband + stickband, a slip jump, and a sliding part where
the valve moves with the controller output. However, if
k = 0 (i.e., for a pure rst-order plant), only the dead-

band and the slip jump part can be seen. This process
is shown by the solid line in Fig. 2 and has the same
characteristics as a relay with hysteresis. The stiction
models used by Stenman et al. [6] and Horch [7] also
have the characteristics of a relay.
The sliding part shown in Fig. 2(b) appears when a
time-delay is added to the plant. For small values of k,
the relay is a good approximation of the Choudhury
model. Note that the Choudhury model becomes a relay
with hysteresis when k = 0.
For a second-order plus time-delay (SOPTD) plant,
the relay approximation becomes less accurate because
the k values are larger as shown in Fig. 2(c). Because
k > 0 for a SOPTD plant, the relay model is always an
approximation for this system. Fig. 2(d) presents the
I/O characteristics of a sticking valve when the pure
time-delay is zero. This gure shows that for higher-order plants, the relay model becomes less accurate compared to the Choudhury model because k increases
with the plant order. When k is small, the relay is a good
approximation of the stiction behavior.
The results in this section also demonstrate that
although L and h are dierent in nature, both result in
the emergence of the sliding part of stick-slip behavior.
Fig. 2 shows that the I/O characteristics of a sticking
valve in closed-loop depend not only on the deadband
and slip-jump parameters, but also on the plant dynamics. We will show later in the paper that a pure timedelay contributes more to the dierences in the two
models than higher-order dynamics.

4. Analysis for rst and second-order plus time-delay

plants
In this section, we analyze the behavior of rst and
second-order plus time-delay plants with valve stiction.
The relay approximation is used to model stiction in order to derive analytical expressions for the ratio R.
4.1. First-order plus time-delay (FOPTD) plant
The FOPTD plant considered in this analysis is,
Gp s

es
;
Ts 1

1 6 T 6 10

so that 0.1 6 k = 1/T 6 1.

Analytical expressions for R are obtained by the following steps: (1) calculation of the oscillation frequency,
(2) calculation of the steady-state periodic plant output,
and (3) calculation of R from the steady-state periodic
plant output.
Let Gc(s) be the transfer function of the controller.
An estimate of the oscillation frequency is obtained by
solving for the frequency at which the Nyquist curve
of Gc(jx) Gp(jx) intersects the negative inverse of the

A. Singhal, T.I. Salsbury / Journal of Process Control 15 (2005) 371382

375

= 0.5

valve output (x)

valve output (x)

= 0.1

plant with timedelay (Choudhury

model)
plant with
no time-delay
(relay)

= 0.83

=0

slip jump

deadband+stickband
valve input/controller output (u)
valve input (u)

(b) FOPTD plant

(a) Sticking valve I/O

second
order

= 0.45

third
order

= 0.63

= 0.16

relay
( = 0)

valve output (x)

valve output (x)

= 0.22

first
order

pure time
delay = 0

valve input (u)

valve input (u)

(c) SOPTD plant

(d) Higher order plants

Fig. 2. Closed-loop I/O characteristics of a sticking valve.

4K c cos x xsI sin x 4K c xT  sin x xsI cos x

1.5

Gp =

e-s
Ts+1

Gc =

Kc(I s+1)
I s

paxsI 1 x2 T 2 :

imaginary axis

0.5

The solution of Eq. (8) is xosc and the oscillation halfperiod is b = p/xosc.
Remarks:

increasing osc

-1

-1.5
-1

-1
N(a)

Gc(j) Gp(j)

-0.5

-0.8

-
4

increasing a

osc

-0.6

-0.4
real axis

-0.2

0.2

Fig. 3. Estimation of the oscillation frequency using a Nyquist plot.

describing function 3 of a relay [14] as shown in Fig. 3.

Let Kc and sI be the proportional gain and integral time
for the PI controller, and a be the ratio of the deadband
(e) to the slip-jump (d) parameters, then the oscillation
frequency is calculated by solving the following nonlinear equation for x:

Describing function: N a

h p
i1
p
pe
2
2
.
4d a  e j 4d

(1) The describing function approach provides an

approximate analysis and the actual oscillation frequency may be dierent from the calculated one.
The magnitude of this dierence depends on the
nature of the nonlinearity and the spectral characteristics of GcGp. The reader may refer to Section
7.2 of [19] for details regarding the describing function method.
(2) The oscillation frequency xosc depends on the ratio
a = e/d, and not on the individual magnitudes of the
deadband and slip-jump parameters. A larger a
(large deadband, small slip-jump) results in a lower
oscillation frequency and a smaller a (small deadband, large slip-jump) results in a higher oscillation
frequency. Additionally, if there is no stiction, then
there are no oscillations due to stiction and a = e/
d = 0/0 is undened.
We use LePages method [20] to determine the steady
state response of a rst-order plant given by Eq. (7) to a

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A. Singhal, T.I. Salsbury / Journal of Process Control 15 (2005) 371382

rectangular wave input. The Laplace transform of a

rectangular wave of unit amplitude and period 2b is
tanh(bs/2)/s. After solving for the system output, dropping the transient response and e2bs terms, and taking
inverse Laplace transform we obtain the steady-state
periodic system output as
pt p0 t  k  2b;

k bt=2bc;

10

where k is the integer part of t/2b, and p0 is the repeating

part of p(t) given by



2
p0 t 1 
et=T  21  et=T ht  b;
1 eb=T
10

0 6 t < 2b;

where h(t  b) is the Heaviside step function with a lag

of b. The function p0(t) for b = 1 and T = 1 is plotted
in Fig. 4.
The areas before and after the peak are denoted by A1
and A2. Using Fig. 4 and symmetry, the two areas are
calculated as
Z b
Z tz
A1
p0 t dt and A2 
p0 t dt;
11
0

tz

b=T

1
. After substiwhere tz T loge 1 K 1 and K 1 e
e2b=T 1
tuting Eq. (10) in Eq. (11), the expression for the ratio
R = A1/A2 is found to be:
b t 
 z 1 K 1 eb=T  etz =T
:
12
R T T
1 K 1 1  etz =T  tTz

Because tz/T and K1 depend only on b/T, the expression

for R in Eq. (12) also depends only on the ratio b/T, that
is, the ratio of the areas, R, is a function of the ratio of
the oscillation period and the plant time constant. Also
note that R depends on the ratio, a, of the deadband and

0.5

b=1
T=1

0.25

A2

A1

p (t)
0

A2
0.25

tz

0.5
0

0.5

1.5

t
Fig. 4. Steady-state response of a rst-order plant to a rectangularwave.

10

b /T
Fig. 5. Variation of the area ratio, R, with b/T for a FOPTD plant.

slip-jump parameters and not their individual

magnitudes.
A plot of R for dierent values of b/T is presented in
Fig. 5 that shows R P 1. The reader may verify that
when b/T ! 0, R ! 1. For aggressive controllers, b is
small. Thus, as the controller becomes more aggressive
(smaller b/T), R becomes smaller.
To observe the eect of controller tuning on R, we selected four dierent PI controller tuning methods to calculate Kc and sI using the parameters ~h 1 and s = T.
The dierent PI controller tuning methods can be found
in [21] and were:
(1) Approximate MS-constrained Integral Gain Optimization (AMIGO) tuning rule [22].
(2) ChienHronesReswick (CHR) rule for setpoint
change with 0% overshoot.
(3) ZieglerNichols (ZN) tuning rule.
(4) CohenCoon (CC) tuning rule.
When the controller and plant transfer functions are
known, the control performance can be measured using
the maximum values of the absolute sensitivity and complimentary sensitivity functions. These maximum values
are denoted by MS and MT. For satisfactory control, MS
should be in the range of 1.22.0, and MT should be in
the range of 1.01.5; higher values mean aggressive control, while lower values mean sluggish control [23]. The
CHR and AMIGO methods result in well-tuned controllers, while ZieglerNichols and CohenCoon methods result in aggressive control. Fig. 6 shows the
variation of R for dierent controller tuning methods.
Fig. 6 shows that for aggressively tuned controllers,
such as the ones tuned using the ZieglerNichols and
CohenCoon methods, the value of R is closer to unity

A. Singhal, T.I. Salsbury / Journal of Process Control 15 (2005) 371382

10

b=1
T=1

ZieglerNichols

CHR
(0% overshoot)

0.1

377

AMIGO

R 5

1,2

p (t)
0

0
CohenCoon

A 1,1

A2

1
0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

0.1

compared to more conservative tuning using the AMIGO and CHR methods.
Out of the four curves of Fig. 6, only the CHR curve
shows non-monotonic behavior. The reason for this
behavior is that the CHR tuning rule uses only the
time-constant to calculate the integral time while the
other three methods use the time-delay information as
well. Thus, for small k (or large T), the CHR rule results
in larger sI compared to the other three tuning methods
and consequently results in larger values of R.
4.2. Second-order plus time-delay (SOPTD) plant
The SOPTD plant considered in this analysis is [14]:
es
Ts 1

13

1 6 T 6 10:

Following the procedure described in Section 4.1, the

periodic part of the steady-state output for the SOPTD
plant is found to be:

K2 

2b=T 1  e2b=T eb=T  e2b=T

"

"
K3

1 
1  e

1  e
1 

b=T

2b=T

 2b=T e

2
e2b=T

Z tp
Z b
p0 t dt
p0 t dt;
A1 
0
tz
|
{z} |{z}
A1;1

A2 

17

A1;2

tz

p0 t dt;

18

tp

where tp is the location of the rst trough of the response

(0 6 tp 6 b), and tz is the time when p0(t) = 0
(0 6 tz 6 b). Calculation of tz requires solving the nonlinear equation (14), while tp is calculated as



K3  K2
tp T
:
19
1 K3
Substituting Eq. (14) in Eqs. (17) and (18) we have,
A1 b  tz  tp T 1 K 2 1 eb=T  etz =T
 1 tz =T etz =T  1 tp =T etp =T 

20

A2 tp  tz T 1 K 2 etp =T  etz =T  T 1 K 3

 1 tp =T etp =T  1 tz =T etz =T :

#
;

15

16

Eq. (14) is plotted in Fig. 7 for the values b = 1 and

T = 1.
Using Fig. 7 and symmetry, the areas A1 and A2 are
calculated as

21

The ratio of the areas, R, is simply:

R

e  1
:
e2b=T  1

1.5

and

2b=T

Fig. 7. Steady-state response of a second-order plant to a rectangularwave.

14

2
e2b=T

b=T 2

0.5

 etp =T  T 1 K 3 1 1 b=T eb=T

 21  1 t=T et=T ht  b;

"

b + tp

p0 t 1  1 K 2 1 K 3 t=T et=T
where

Fig. 6. Variation of the area ratio, R, with 1/T for a FOPTD plant and
dierent PI controller tuning rules.

Gp s

tz

A1
:
A2

22

R is plotted for dierent values of b/T in Fig. 8. An

interesting observation from Fig. 8 is that R < 1 for
b/T < 2.46. Recall that a smaller value of b means a faster/more aggressive controller. Thus, Fig. 8 suggests that
for a second-order plant, R can be less than one for
aggressive controllers when valve stiction is present.

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A. Singhal, T.I. Salsbury / Journal of Process Control 15 (2005) 371382

methods result in R < 1 because they produce controllers that are too aggressive.
Fig. 9 shows that although the R-curves for ZN and
CC methods are close to each other, their MS and MT
curves are far apart. The reason for this discrepancy appears to be the dierence in the controller setttings calulated by the two methods. While both ZN and CC
methods result in very similar controller gains, the CC
method calculates shorter integral times. Thus, the MS
and MT values are larger for the CC method. Also, it appears that shorter integral time aects R less than the
sensitivity functions.

10

1st order system

5

R
2nd order system

10

5. Comparison of relay and Choudhury models for

valve stiction

b/T
Fig. 8. Variation of the area ratio, R, with b/T for a SOPTD plant.

This phenomenon appears to be caused by the change in

the curvature of the step response of a second-order system. Assuming a positive plant gain, the second-derivative of the step-response of a second-order system is
positive before the inection point, and negative afterwards. For small values of b/T, a major proportion of
the periodic response is before the inection point (positive second-derivative). By symmetry, the response after
the peak of the signal also has a positive second-derivative. These signal shapes cause the ratio R to become less
than unity. However, for large b/T the major fraction of
the periodic response is after the inection point and we
have R > 1.
To observe the eect of controller tuning on R for a
SOPTD plant, we apply tuning rules to determine controller settings. Because tuning rules commonly rely on
FOPTD parameters, the SOPTD model is reduced to
a FOPTD form to calculate the controller settings.
By substituting n = 2 in Eqs. (4) and (5), the calculated eective time-delay and the apparent timeconstant for the SOPTD plant are ~
h 1 3  eT
and s = (e  1)T, respectively. The controller is tuned
using these apparent FOPTD plant parameters and the
tuning methods listed in Section 4.1.
The variation of R with k for dierent tuning methods is presented in Fig. 9. The gure shows that aggressive tuning methods such as ZN and CC result in smaller
R values, while AMIGO and CHR methods that produce satisfactory control performance result in larger
R values.
In addition to calculating R for dierent tuning methods, the sensitivity function, MS, and the complimentary
sensitivity function MT are also presented in Fig. 9. The
gure shows that for small values of k, MS and MT are
large for ZieglerNichols and the CohenCoon tuning
methods. Thus, ZieglerNichols and CohenCoon

In this section, we compare results in Section 4 using

the Choudhury model. Because the describing function
for the Choudhury stiction model is much more complicated than the relay model [24], obtaining analytical
expressions for R is dicult. Thus, we present results
by simulating a closed loop with stiction described by
the Choudhury model and calculating R numerically.
To improve the accuracy of the numerical calculations,
the sampling period for control and measuring process
variables is set to a 200th of the plant time-constant.
Fig. 10 presents the variation of R with k for the Choudhury and the relay stiction models when the controller
is tuned using the AMIGO method. Although, the curve
for the Choudhury model is lower than the curve for the
relay model, the value of R is greater than unity for both
models. This result shows that the proposed method can
detect valve stiction described by both models when the
controller is well tuned.
The reason for the lower R values for the Choudhury
model can be explained as follows: when the original
Choudhury model is used to simulate stiction in a closed
loop, the valve output (or the plant input) is not a rectangular wave but a combination of a step and a ramp as
shown in Fig. 11. The step part of the signal corresponds
to the slip-jump, while the ramp part is the sliding part
of the I/O characteristic as shown in Fig. 2. As the delay
increases, the sliding part becomes larger compared to
the slip-jump and the valve output moves with the controller output for a longer period of time and results in a
smaller R value.
The value of R increases with increasing k because the
controllers become less aggressive (decreasing MS and
MT in Fig. 9). The reason for the increasing dierence
between the two curves with k is that the dierence between the I/O characteristics of a relay and the Choudhury model increases with k as shown in Fig. 2. For the
same reason, the dierence in the two curves is also larger for the SOPTD plant compared to the FOPTD
plant.

A. Singhal, T.I. Salsbury / Journal of Process Control 15 (2005) 371382

379

10
CHR
AMIGO
5

CC
ZN
1
0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

5
AMIGO

ZN

CHR

CC

1
0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

5
AMIGO

MT

ZN

CHR

CC

1
0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

Fig. 9. Variation of the area ratio, R, with k for a SOPTD plant and dierent PI controller tuning rules.

(a) FOPTD plant

10

(b) SOPTD plant

relay model

10

relay model
5

Choudhury
model
Choudhury
model
1

1
0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

Fig. 10. Comparison of the area ratio, R using the relay and the Choudhury models with the AMIGO PI controller tuning rule.

Fig. 12 shows the variation of R for dierent plant orders (cf. Eq. (3)) with no pure time-delay. In this situa-

tion, the dierence between the relay and the original

stiction models is smaller, and the two curves do not

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A. Singhal, T.I. Salsbury / Journal of Process Control 15 (2005) 371382

valve output

0.12

Choudhury
stiction model

0.08
relay

0.04

0
270

280

time

290

300

Fig. 11. Valve output using the Choudhury model for a FOPTD plant
(k = 0.5, deadband = slip-jump = 0.1).

10

L=0
5
relay model

Choudhury
model
1
0 (1)

0.16 (2)

0.37 (3)

0.55 (4) 0.72 (5) 0.88 (6) 1.03 (7)

(n)

Fig. 12. Comparison of R for the relay and the Choudhury models.
The controller for every plant-order is tuned using the AMIGO
method and the plant-orders are shown in parentheses with their k
values.

diverge as much as in Fig. 10. Thus, it appears that a

pure time-delay contributes more to the dierences in
the two models than higher-order dynamics.

6. Practical considerations
The stiction detection method proposed in this paper
is designed for single-input single-output (SISO) control
loops and self-regulating plants with monotone stepresponse. The methodology is not designed for integrating plants because stiction results in a triangular-wave
with R = 1. In this situation, other methods such as
the one proposed by [8] or [9] may be used, however,
the user may still have to contend with noise and computational issues.

Nonlinear plants having high gain ratios, and change

in dynamics with change in plant-input direction can
also result in R > 1 even though no valve-stiction may
be present. For such plants, more complex methods
such as [9], may be used to diagnose the problem. A detailed analysis for distinguishing between nonlinear
plant behavior and stiction is proposed as future
research.
Because the stiction detection method presented in
this paper is based on calculating areas under the control error signal, factors that aect the area calculation,
also aect the stiction detection method. Two major factors: sampling period and noise, inuence the eectiveness of the proposed method. Large sampling periods
hide key features of the signal such as its curvature
and the location of the peak and adversely aect the
area calculation, while fast sampling reveals these features. Thus, to reliably calculate the estimate of the
areas, the error signal must be sampled many times
per oscillation period.
In most practical applications, the control error signal contains noise that can corrupt its key features
such as the location of the peak and the points of
zero-crossings. The zero-crossings are points at which
a signal crosses zero or its expected value. Presence
of noise can result in multiple zero-crossings when
the control error signal is close to zero. Because the
proposed method calculates areas between the zerocrossings and the peaks, the areas calculated between
the zero-crossings of noise can result in misleading R
values.
We hypothesize that the eect of noise on the location
of the peak is less severe because of the following reason
stated without proof. Consider stationary and zeromean autoregressive noise on the oscillating signal that
corrupts the actual location of the peak. Let the uncertainty in the location of the peak for every half-oscillation be Dtp. Because the noise is zero-mean and
stationary, the expected value or a statistical average
of Dtp over several oscillations is zero. Because of this
reason, averaging R over a few oscillation periods will
reveal its expected or mean value for the oscillating
signal.
Still, the eect of noise must be reduced for the proposed method to be eective for practical applications.
Horch [8] suggested using a low-pass digital lter to reduce noise on the signal. He suggested a lter cuto frequency of three times the oscillation frequency. If xosc is
the oscillation frequency, and Ts is the sampling period,
the lter transfer function is,
H f q1

1c
;
1  cq1

c e3xosc T s ;

23

where q1 is a backward shift operation. In addition to

ltering, the value of R may be averaged over a few

A. Singhal, T.I. Salsbury / Journal of Process Control 15 (2005) 371382

Before detuning (average R 1.1)

381

After detuning (average R 2.5)

noisy signal
1

control error

control error

filtered signal
(solid line)

500

600

700

800

900

1000

3200

time [min]

3300

3400

3500

3600

time [min]

Fig. 13. Detection of the presence of stiction in a control loop using the proposed method.

oscillation periods to reduce its variability and improve

the stiction detection process.
In Section 2, we stated that if R > 1 then the oscillations are caused by stiction, while R
1 means aggressive control. For practical implementation, the
boundary value of R = 1 will result in too many false
alarms. Thus, to improve the robustness of stiction
detection, we recommend the decision rule,

oscillation diagnosis

stiction
if R > 1 d;
aggressive control otherwise;

where d is a threshold that determines the sensitivity of

the stiction detection method. A small value of d will result in high sensitivity and high probability of false
alarms, while a larger d will result in reduced sensitivity
and a lower probability of false alarms. A value of d between half and one was found to provide a satisfactory
trade-o.

7. Field result
The proposed stiction detection method was used to
diagnose the cause of oscillations in a room temperature
control loop in a commercial building. The loop was
oscillating with a period of approximately 13 min.
Detuning the controller increased the period to 62 min
but did not eliminate the oscillations. Fig. 13 presents
the oscillating behavior of the control error signal before
and after the detuning. The average R value for the period after detuning is about 2.5, which is suciently large
to conclude that the oscillations are caused by stiction.
Further examination of the actuators movement conrmed that the oscillations were caused by stick-slip
behavior.

8. Conclusions and future research

A new, simple and eective method for detecting stiction in an oscillating control loop has been presented.
The method is based on calculating the ratio of areas,
R, before and after the peak of an oscillating control error signal, and does not require measuring the controller
output. The method is simple and easy to implement online (e.g., in a eld controller). By approximating the
stiction behavior as a relay with hysteresis, analytical
expressions were derived that demonstrate R > 1 when
oscillations are caused by valve stiction. Numerical simulations with the full Choudhury stiction model conrm
that the proposed method also results in R > 1 when
stiction is present.
A natural extension of this research would involve
combining the stiction detection method presented in
this paper with automated methods for measuring and
compensating stiction using methods such as Hgglunds
stiction knocker [25]. Future research would also focus on performing a detailed analysis to investigate the
eect of variable gain, dynamic nonlinearity and stiction
on loop oscillations. The analysis would help in dierentiating between poor loop performance caused by the
dierent types of nonlinearities.

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