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Keywords: Process Control, Computer Aided Control System Design, Multivariable Control Systems.
One of the main stages in the sugar manufacturing The system dealt with is a stirred tank (Figure 1) where
process takes place in the purification station where the a suspension of lime is mixed with water to decrease the
impurities of the juice are removed by means of two dissolution density. The product leaves the tank and it is
v
carbonation proce ses See McGinnis (6)). An auxiliary
component of the carbonation section is the Milk of
dissolved with the raw juice (obtained by a diffusion
process from sliced sugar beet and water) during the first
Lime Blending Tank (MLBT) which provides a uniform steps of the purification process, in which the non-sugars
flow of milk of lime (calcium hydroxide). One of the present in the juice form insoluble products which are
most important aim of the control system is to keep the then easily eliminated by filtering.
density at the output at prescribed values despite the
disturbance effects. The level of liquid in the tank is
maintained within a specified range to avoid flow
obstruction due to the high density of the dissolution.
The interaction b e b e e n the control loops, the presence
of non-linearities and disturbances justify the use of
advanced control techniques.
essure
Currently, most of the advanced controllers are usually
designed by using a linear model of the process based on
Mllk of Lime Concentrahon, c
fixed information 1 of the plant that is imperfect and Figure 1: Milk of Lime Blending Tank
incomplete. Control quality may deteriorate when the
The mathematical model of the MLBT comprises two
non-linear state space equations corresponding to mass
This work was supported in part by the CICYT under
balances (Vega et al. (9)):
grant BI094-0679-C02-02
U w c C InternationAIConference on CONTROL ‘96,2-5 September 1996, Conference Publication NO.427 0 IEE 1996
800
The use of Robust Control techniques seems to be a good The uncertainties due to the non-linear characteristics of
choice in order to design a concentration and level the system were described as output multiplicative
controller providing good control performance in every inverse uncertainties. By using this description and by
working condition. working out a set of linearised models at different
working points (GI, G2,..) , the corresponding set of
model uncertainties Ai was obtained and the each upper
ROBUST CONTROL THEORY REVIEW singular value ??(Ai) over the frequency range
evaluated. For instance, the size of the uncertainties
The classical method for designing model based caused by varying the concentration of lime in the tank
controllers uses a linearised model (6)of the real plant against frequency are plotted in figure 3.
(G) around the working point. The aim of Robust
Control is to model the Uncertainties (variations of the
nominal model) and use them together with the nominal
model in the design procedure to ensure robust stability
aoi
," a,
unc-rt- "ty m a t r c s s ,or r ? *O.y,ns [O 0 , 0
For the case of the MLBT the frequency spectrum of the
disturbances on the outputs can be seen in figure 5
together with the transfer function that limited them that
-20 more precisely was found to be
10-1 re-3 7 0- 10. 10. ' ' -dIf Wl(s) > W,(s) the condition for the disturbances is
f?.qu."Cy
70
eo -
I
I
-
I
50
3 -0-
5.6755 0.3830
3e =O- I K = [ -7.2524 0.1274
20-
'0 -
0 - I ._ _ and the PIS tuning for each loop was: kp = 3.2, Tl = 2.5
-10 -i and for loop two , k = 5.0, Ti = 2.1.
Ir.q".ncy
'O'
In the second step this controller is augmented by a low-
Figure 5 : Frequ ,ncy spectra and weighting function pass filter with parameters that can be tuned to fdfill the
performance and robustness specification (See Morari
i and Zafiriou (2)).
802
Q(s>=
3.0259(s + 1.3064)
-4.2033(~+ 1.2019)
0.1613(s + 8.7278)
0.0537(~+ 8.7278)
This controller was augmented with a low pass filter F
such that F = ( l + h s ) - l l
I
and Q = Q F . Then the
-
-__
A, -
;tFF:
with p.
The robust stability and performance conditions are Model reduction. The controller obtained with the 1-1
satisfied if and only if pe(M) < 1 . Furthermore, in order synthesis technique had 13 states. To implement it, it
to use the SSV as a design tool for obtaining robust may be convenient to reduce the order. Particularly, the
controllers, by using the H, optimization method on the Hankel singular values were calculated first in order to
modified plant, the controllers that reduce the SSV until choose the number of states to be removed. After, a
the robustness condition is found. When the method was stochastically balanced realization of the controller was
apply to the MLBT plant, the interconnection structure calculated and then the states to be eliminated
was the one represented in figure 9. residualized (As shown in Green and Limebeer (5)). The
result of applying this method was:
CONCLUSIONS
compared with the classical
controlled systed in different situations, for most of the This paper has shown that the Robust Control Design is
i
simulations they mproved the system response in terms
of robustness and stability.
an efficient altemative to the Classical Control Design
when dealing with MIMO systems that suffer from
important interactions and disturbances. Moreover, the
!
Nominal perfor ance (Output concentration change) difficulty of the Robust Control Design does not increase
First of all, th controlled system performed in the with the number of control loops. This is because it is
:.
operation point osen to calculate the nominal model based on the maximum singular value.
was studied. Wi hout any disturbances and with the
nominal paramet rs a step in the desired output lime The improved performance of the MLBT using the
concentration of 6% (from yl=1.16 to yl=l.lO) was designed IMC, H, and p controllers was shown: The
simulated to stu y its nominal performance. figure 1 1 disturbance rejection is increased, and the interaction
shows that the robust controllers need slightly more time between loops is decreased when it is working far from
the nominal point. They were considered feasible to
implement in the real plant.
by the PID controlled vary
ones have sharp peaks. REFERENCES
4/ Tank Level ,
PID Hinf MC p
9,
I
Figure 11: Tank Level Setpoint Change in the nominal working point
Output C o n c e n t r a t i o n
‘ I I
p 0lc Hi PID
PID Hinf IMC p
v1
0
9 d
0 i.6667 i.3333 ’ 6.6667 E. 3333 0.0
T5.O
Figure 12: Output valve opening changed from 50% to 20%
0
0
2. Tank L e v e l Output C o n c e n t r a t i o n
I -
? ! , , , , , I 9
d “
0.0 3.3333 6.6667 fO.0 13.333 16.667 20.0 0 3.3333 6.6667
6.6667 jO.0 13.333 16.667 0.0