Chapter 3

Measurement Methods and Control

Strategies
W. Boyes

3.1 Introduction

3.3 Process control strategies

Measurement methods for automation are somewhat different from those designed for use in laboratories and test
centers.
Specific to automation, measurement methods that work
well in a laboratory might not work at all in a process or
factory-floor environment. It might not be possible to know
all the variables acting on a measurement to determine the
degree of error (uncertainty) of that measurement. For example, a flowmeter may be calibrated at the factory with an accuracy of 0.05% of actual flow. Yet in the field, once installed,
an automation professional might be lucky to be able to
calibrate the flowmeter to 10% of actual flow because of
the conditions of installation. Because control strategies are
often continuous, it is often impossible to remove the sensor
from the line for calibration.

Basic process control strategies include on/off control;

deadband control; proportional, integral, derivative (PID)
control; and its derivatives.
On/off control is simple and effective but may not be
able to respond to rapid changes in the measured variable
(known as PV, or process variable). The next iteration is a
type of on/off control called deadband, or hysteresis control.
In this method, either the on or the off action is delayed
until a prescribed limit set point is reached, either ascending
or descending. Often multiple limit set points are defined,
such as a level application with high level, high-high
level, and high-overflow level set points. Each of the set
points is defined as requiring a specific action.
Feedback control is used with a desired set point from
which deviation is not desired. When the measured variable
deviates from the set point, the controller output drives the
measured variable back toward the set point. Most of the
feedback control algorithms in use are some form of PID
algorithm, of which there are three basic types: the standard,
or ideal, form, sometimes called the ISA form; the interactive form, which was the predominant form for analog
controllers; and the parallel form, which is rarely found in
industrial process control.
In the PID algorithm, the proportional term provides
most of the control while the integral function and the derivative function provide additional correction. In practice, the
proportional and integral terms do most of the control; the
derivative term is often set to 0.
PID loops contain one measured variable, one controller, and one final control element. This is the basic control

3.2 Measurement and field

calibration methodology
In many cases, then, field calibration methods are expedients designed to determine not the absolute accuracy of
the measurement but the repeatability of the measurement.
Especially in process applications, repeatability is far more
critical to the control scheme than absolute accuracy. It is
often not possible to do more than one or two calibration
runs in situ in a process application. It often means that the
calibration and statistical repeatability of the transmitter is
what is checked in the field, rather than the accuracy of the
entire sensor element.

2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

doi: 10.1016/B978-0-7506-8308-1.00003-6

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PART | I The Automation Knowledge Base

loop in automation. PID loops need to be tuned; there

are several tuning algorithms, such as Ziegler-Nichols and
others, that allow the loop to be tuned. Many vendors today
provide automatic loop-tuning products in their control
software offerings.
PID feedback controllers work well when there are few
process disturbances. When the process is upset or is regularly discontinuous, it is necessary to look at other types of
controllers. Some of these include ratio, feed forward, and
cascade control. In ratio control, which is most often found
in blending of two process streams, the basic process stream
provides the pacing for the process while the flow rates for
the other streams are modulated to make sure that they are
in a specific ratio to the basic process stream. Feed forward
control, or open loop control, uses the rate of fall-off from
the set point (a disturbance in the process) to manipulate the
controlled variable. An example is the use of a flowmeter to
control the injection of a chemical additive downstream of
the flowmeter. There must be some model of the process so
that the effect of the flow change can be used to induce the
correct effect on the process downstream.
Combining feed forward and feedback control in one
integrated control loop is called cascade control. In this
scheme, the major correction is done by feed forward control, and the minor correction (sometimes called trim) is
done by the feedback loop. An example is the use of flow
to control the feed of a chemical additive while using an
analyzer downstream of the addition point to modulate the
set point of the flow controller.

multiple fuzzy logic sets appear to be able to learn, they are

often regarded as a crude form of artificial intelligence. In
process automation, only four rules are required for a fuzzy
logic controller:2

3.4Advanced control strategies

Suggested Reading

Since the 1960s, advances in modeling the behavior of

processes have permitted a wholly new class of control
strategies, called advanced process control, or APC. These
control strategies are almost always layered over the basic
PID algorithm and the standard control loop. These APC
strategies include fuzzy logic, adaptive control, and model
predictive control.
Conceived in 1964 by University of California at Berkeley
scientist Lotfi Zadeh, fuzzy logic is based on the concept of
fuzzy sets, where membership in the set is based on probabilities or degrees of truth rather than yes or no.1 Because

Dieck, Ronald H., Measurement Uncertainty, Methods and Applications,

4th ed., ISA Press, Research Triangle Park, NC, 2007.
Trevathan, Vernon L., editor, A Guide to the Automation Body of Know
ledge, 2nd ed., ISA Press, Research Triangle Park, NC, 2006.
Blevins, Terry, and McMillan, Gregory, et al., Advanced Control
Unleashed: Plant Performance Management for Optimum Benefit,
ISA Press, Research Triangle Park, NC, 2003.

1. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, quoted in www.answers.com

Rule 1: If the error is negative and the change in error is

negative, the change in output is positive.
Rule 2: If the error is negative and the change in error is
positive, the change in output is zero.
Rule 3: If the error is positive and the change in error is
negative, the change in output is zero.
Rule 4: If the error is positive and the change in error is
positive, the change in output is negative.
Adaptive control is somewhat loosely defined as any algorithm in which the controllers tuning has been altered. Another
term for adaptive controllers is self-tuning controllers.
Model predictive control uses historicized incremental
models of the process to be controlled where the change in
a variable can be predicted. When the MPC controller is initialized, the model parameters are set to match the actual
performance of the plant. According to Gregory McMillan,
MPC sees future trajectory based on past moves of manipulated variables and present changes in disturbance variables
as inputs to a linear model. It provides an integral-only type
of control.3
These advanced control strategies can often improve
loop performance but, beyond that, they are also useful in
optimizing performance of whole groups of loops, entire
processes, and even entire plants themselves.

2. McMillan, Gregory K., Advanced Process Control, in A Guide to the

Automation Body of Knowledge, 2nd ed., ISA Press, Research Triangle
Park, NC, 2006
3. Ibid