Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145

www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Eects of a GPC-PID control strategy with

hierarchical structure for a cooling coil unit
Min Xu a, Shaoyuan Li

a,*

, Wen-jian Cai b, Lu Lu

Department of Automation, Institute of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 1954 Hua-Shan Rd.,
Shanghai 200030, PR China
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore
Received 19 February 2004; received in revised form 29 September 2004; accepted 30 March 2005
Available online 23 May 2005

Abstract
This paper presents a GPC-PID control strategy for a cooling-coil unit in heating, ventilation and air
conditioning systems. By analysis of the cooling towers and chillers, dierent models in the occupied period
are considered in each operating condition. Because of the complication of components, well tuned PID
controllers are unsatised, and the results are poor over a wide range of operation conditions. To solve this
problem, a GPC-PID controller with hierarchical structure is proposed based on minimizing the generalized predictive control criterion to tune conventional PID controller parameters. Simulation and experiments show that the proposed controller is able to deal with a wide range of operating conditions and
to achieve better performance than conventional methods.

2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems; Generalized predictive control; A cooling coil unit; PID

Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +862162932114.

E-mail address: syli@sjtu.edu.cn (S. Li).

0196-8904/$ - see front matter
2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2005.03.012

M. Xu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145

Nomenclature
Symbols
Tcwi
chilled water inlet temperature
Tcwo chilled water outlet temperature
dry bulb temperature in on-coil state
Tai
dry bulb temperature in o-coil state
Tao
Taiwb wet bulb temperature in on-coil state
Taowb wet bulb temperature in o-coil state
air ow of cooling coil
Fa
chilled water ow rate
Fcw
Q
real cooling load provided by all chillers
chilled water specic heat
ccw
air specic heat
ca
c1, c2, e parameters in cooling coil model
f
non-linear time varying function
proportional gain
KP
integral parameter
Ki
derivative parameter
Kd
minimum predictive horizon
N0
maximum predictive horizon
N1
control horizon
Nu
y(k + j) system output at time k + j
^y k j system predictive output at time k + j
e(k)
error at time k
w0, w1, w2 proposed controller parameters
J
performance index
r(k)
system output at time k
G, E, F, H two Diophantine equation parameter
Abbreviations
AHU air handling unit
PID proportional integral derivative
GPC generalized predictive control
FOPDT rst-order plus dead time
FIR nite impulse response
CARIMA controlled autoregressive and integrated moving average model
VSD variable speed drives
CCU cooling coils unit
HVAC heating, ventilation and air-condition

133

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M. Xu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145

1. Introduction
In most large air conditioned buildings, air handling units (AHUs) account for a signicant
portion of the total building energy consumption and have a major eect on comfort conditions
and maintenance costs. Besides, because of the practical characteristics of AHUs and the constraints imposed by non-ideal actuators, AHUs can be considered as highly non-linear systems
[1]. Therefore, the control problem for AHUs is both dicult and important. Generally, AHUs
adopt the standard proportional integral derivative (PID) control method to maintain the supply
air temperature at the set point value by changing the chilled water ow. This control method has
a simple structure, a few parameters and robustness to disturbance. This method is favorable on
the assumption that the system model parameters vary in a narrow range [2]. However, a controller for an AHU should be designed to cope with a wide range of operating conditions because of
the multiple time varying processes taking place in the system. The use of xed gain PID controllers is not likely to give satisfactory performance, even with a well tuned PID controller, when
applied to another system with dierent model parameters and results in poor response. Therefore, an adaptive controller, which can solve the AHU problem and obtain better performance
over a large range of operating condition, is highly desirable.
Over decades, numerous studies related to advanced algorithms for AHU systems appear in the
literature [35]. Generalized predictive control (GPC), which intends to solve an optimization
problem subject to system constraints for a nite future at the current time and to implement
the rst optimal control input as the current control input, is another self tuning technique
attempted by many researchers [6].
In this paper, we are interested in developing a hierarchical structure control scheme for
incorporating GPC into the PID controller. The reasons lie in:
Once advanced algorithms (such as GPC) are adopted, the existing equipment, especially hardware parts, has to be upgraded at a large cost.
The engineering level and the complicated algorithm will prohibit the implementation of the
advanced control method.
The advanced tuning methods usually lack explicit specications and the plant operators are
unfamiliar with the parameters tuning.
The proposed hierarchical structure control strategy consists of two levels, a basic level and an
optimization level. The basic level is a conventional PID controller, which is not likely to give satisfactory performance as operating conditions change. Through predicting system output and
minimizing the GPC criterion in the optimization level, the gain of the PID controller is a variable, changing with time, to cater for the changing system and the environmental uncertainties.
As a matter of fact, the closed loop performance equals that of the standard GPC, while the practical controller still remains a PID structure to plant personnel. Hence, it is not necessary that
they grasp the advanced algorithm, and the system performance can be improved with only a
minor cost. Simulations and experiments are conducted for a cooling coil unit in an AHU system, and the results show performance improvement and a signicant reduction of the operating
cost.

M. Xu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145

135

2. Air handing unit and control

2.1. Main components of the system
A schematic diagram of an AHU is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of coils, air dampers, fans,
pumps, lters and valves.
Fresh air from outdoors enters the AHU through the outdoor air damper and may be mixed
with air passing through the recirculation air dampers depending on the mixing box damper settings. The temperatures and ow rates of the outdoors and recirculation air streams determine the
conditions at the exit of the mixed air plenum. Air, which is exiting the mixed air plenum, passes
through heating or cooling coils. At most, only one of the two coils will be active at any given time
if implemented properly and there are no valve leaks or other faults in the system. Here, we only
consider a cooling coil. After being conditioned in the coils, the air is distributed to the zones
through the supply air ductwork. The supply air temperature is measured downstream of the supply fan. Return air is drawn from the conditioned zones by the return fan and is exhausted or
recirculated, depending once again on the position of the mixing box dampers. The return air
temperature is measured downstream of the return fan.
Control parameters of an AHU system are the temperature and ow rate of the conditioned air.
To build a closed loop control system, the parameters to be measured are the following: dry bulb
temperatures, wet bulb temperature and the air ow of the cooling coil.
2.2. Plant modeling
Because thermal loads for the zones can vary markedly, it is common for a cooling coil unit to
be controlled to maintain the supply air temperature Tao at a set point value that is suciently low
Exhausted Air
Exhaust
Fan

Filter

T& F Temperature & Flow Sensor

Return
Fan

Return Air Plenum

Damper Motor

From Zones

Recirculation Air Damper

Fa
Cooling

Mixed Air Plenum

Tai

Taiwb

Supply Air
Coil

Outer Air Damper

T& F

Fa
Supply
Fan
Tao

To Zones

Taowb

Filter
T&F

Tcw Fcw

Valve

Chilled water

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of conventional AHU control system.

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M. Xu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145

to satisfy the zone with the largest cooling load at any given time. The output Tao can be described
as follows and is inuenced by Fcw, Fa, Tai and Tcwi:
T ao f F cw ; F a ; T ai ; T cwi

In the steady-state, Eq. (1) can be explicitly expressed by [7]

Q

c1 F ea

e T ai  T cwi
1 c2 FFcwa

and
Q ccw F cw T cwo  T cwi ca F a T ai  T ao

Combining Eqs. (2) and (3), Tao can be written as follows

T ao T ai 

e
c1 =ca F e1
a F cw
T ai  T cwi
F cw c2 F ea

These system variables change with the air and water ow rate. If the air ow rate or chilled water
ow rate is high, the time constant and time delay will be smaller, and vice versa.
2.3. Basic level control strategy
In a cooling coil unit, plant engineers usually adopt the conventional velocity PID controller in
the basic level:
Duk K p K i K d ek K p  2K d ek  1 K d ek  2
w0 ek w1 ek  1 w2 ek  2

where w0 = Kp + Ki + Kd, w1 = Kp  2Kd and w3 = Kd.

As system exhibits nonlinear behavior, the resulting system performance with conventional PID
controller is reduced, especially when the controllers operates over a wide range of operating conditions. One solution to alleviate the problem is continually to retune the basic level controller
parameters over a wide range operating conditions. The other is to design advanced controller
to enable a wider operating conditions. Because of constraints on time availability of plant personnel and running cost of the plant, the former solution is commonly adopted. Therefore, we
design the advanced predictive control algorithm incorporating basic level PID controller, to
retune the basic level controller parameters through receding horizon window on the minimization of GPC criterion.
Over a large range of operating conditions, the controller parameters vary with time, so the
controller can be expressed in the following format:
Duk w0 kek w1 kek  1 w2 kek  2

2
X

wi kek  i W T kek

i0

where
W T k w0 k

w1 k

w2 k 

ek ek

ek  1

ek  2 T

M. Xu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145

137

3. A GPC-PID strategy with hierarchical structure

3.1. Optimization level control strategy
The drawback of the conventional PID controller is that it has three degrees of freedom in tuning, which is dicult for plant engineers to tune the parameters to meet dierent specications.
Hence, in this paper, a GPC-PID control strategy with hierarchical structure is proposed. A basic
level and an optimization level are consisted of the hierarchical control structure. The basic level
controller parameters are retuned via the optimization level based on the identication model
through minimizing the performance index. Since the identication model and criterion is the
same with that of the standard GPC control algorithm, better performance than conventional
PID controller is obtained in the hierarchical structure.
The cooling coil unit to be controlled can be described as a CARIMA model, and j-step system
output can be derived by using two Diophantine equations [8]:
^y k j j k Gj Duk j  1 H j D
uk  1 F j y k
where Gj and Hj are polynomials with respect to q1 of degree j  1 and maxnEB  j 1; n  1,
respectively. D
uk  1 Duk  1=C and y k yk=C, where C is assumed as the minimum
phase and is supposed to be C(z1) = 1.
Substituting Eq. (5) into the above equation yields
!
2
X
^y k j j k Gj
wi kek  i H j Duk  1 F j yk
i0

Therefore, the optimal control variable can be obtained through the GPC criterion.
When model and environment uncertainty is presented, the prior well tuned parameters are no
longer suitable, the optimization level starts to work and nds the optimal controller parameters
{w0(k), w1(k), w2(k)} via a receding horizon optimization method based on a multistage cost
function,
(
)
N1
Nu
X
X
2
2
6
^y k j j k  rk j
kjDuk j  1
J E
jN 0

j1

Substituting Eq. (5) into Eq. (6), the cost function becomes:
(
)
N1
Nu
X
X
J E
ek; W 2
kjW kek2
jN 0

j1

Suppose W*(k  1) is the optimal parameter vector for minimization of J(k  1, W) at the time
k  1.
To achieve an optimal control variable at time interval k, a second-order Taylor expansion of
J(k, W) over W*(k  1) is given by

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M. Xu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145


dJ k; W 
1
J k; W J k; W k  1
 W  W
k  1 W  W
k  1T

dW
2
W
k1

d2 J k; W 

 W  W
k  1 O=W  W
K  1=3

2
dW
W
k1

where O(W) is the higher order expansion terms. By minimizing Eq. (7) with respect to W, the
result is shown as follows:
8

W k W
k  1 P kek; W
k  1  Sk; W
k  1  kW
k  1ekeT k
>
>
>
>
>
QkekeT kQk
>
>
>
P k Qk  k T
>
>
e kP kek 1
>
>
<

P k  1SkS T kP k  1
8
Qk P k  1  k
>
T
>
S
kP
k

1Sk

1
>
>

>
>

>
dek;
W

>


>
Sk; W k  1 
>
>
>
dW W
k1
:
In practice, the signal Du(k)given by W(k) at time k is computed and executed to the system, and
at time k + 1, a new control action Du(k + 1) is recalculated with the estimated model and the criterion on a moving horizon window. Since the estimated model is a CARIMA form, the controller, through minimizing the criterion via receding horizon optimization, is equal to that of
generalized predictive control.
Under the condition k > 0, as the predictive horizon is larger than the amount of the control
horizon, we can guarantee the closed loop asymptotical stability through adjusting the predictive
horizon and control horizon. Simultaneously, it is guaranteed that the maximum predictive horizon is larger than the upper of the time delay and the deterioration of performance will be small.
The GPC-PID control strategy with hierarchical structure is given as follows:
Step
Step
Step
Step
Step
Step

1:
2:
3:
4:
4:
5:

Estimate the nominal CARIMA model to yieldG, H and F.

Set maximum and minimum predictive horizons and control horizon.
Initialize starting values as W*(0) = 0, P(0) = I.
Compute the W*(k) based on Eq. (8) through the predictive horizon.
Set the control law at the sample time k, as Du(k) = W*(k)e(k).
At the next sample timek + 1, go back to step 3 and obtain the next optimal control
value.

Thus, the optimal parameters are retuned at any sample time to obtain better performance than
the conventional PID controller.
4. Simulation and experimental results
The experiment and simulation are also conducted on a typical HVAC system [9] (shown in
Fig. 2). There are ve heat transfer loops: indoor air loop that includes fans, cooling coils, terminal

indoor
air

cooling
coils &
valves

water
pumps

compressor

refrigerant

tower
fans

cooling
towers
condenser
water

chilled
water

139

outdoor
environment

rooms &
dampers

pumps
&
pipes

condensers

coil
fans &
ducts

evaporators

outdoor
environment

M. Xu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145

outdoor
air

chillers

Fig. 2. The plant of a typical HVAC system.

units, dampers and ducts; chilled water loop that includes pipes, pumps, cooling coils, chiller evaporators and valves; refrigerant loop that includes evaporators, compressors, condensers and
expansion valves; condenser water loop that includes cooling towers, chiller condensers and
pumps; outdoor air loop includes fans and cooling towers. All motors (fans, pumps and compressors) are equipped with variable speed drives (VSD) to control the motor speed.
We consider cooling coils units (CCU) with the dimensions of 25 cm 25 cm 8 cm for the
AHU system whose schematic diagram is shown in Fig. 3. The system requires a dierential pressure sensor across each cooling coil to monitor the chilled water ow rate as well as to estimate the
cooling load of each coil. The sensors are also to control the opening positions of control valves to
constrain the chilled water ow. Another dierential pressure sensor is mounted to monitor the
pump head, which is used to control the VSD pump speed. Each coil also requires a temperature sensor to measure the chilled water return temperature together with a common chilled water
supply temperature sensor to estimate the cooling load of each coil.
Each piping branch consists of a cooling coil and a two-way control valve. The two-way control
valve is modulated to keep the o coil air temperature constant for the varying supply air volume
in response to the varying cooling demand. The pump speed is modulated by a dierential pressure sensor to keep the pressure dierential of the farthest away branch (coil + valve) constant.
The set point of a constant pressure dierential is often chosen on the basis of the designed
full load condition. Sometimes, a safety factor is added to make sure that each coil has enough
pressure drop.
Chilled water in
Chilled water pump

Fcw

Tcwi

Cooling coil

Air in

Air out

Fa

Fa

Tai

Taiwb

Chilled water out

Tao Taowb

Tcwo

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of a cooling coil.

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M. Xu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145

The measured signals for the experiment are the air and water ow rates, on coil air dry bulb/
wet bulb temperatures and cooling coil inlet and outlet water temperatures. The experiment is
conducted under the following conditions: the chilled water supply temperature is xed; the cooling load variation is achieved through the air and water ow rates. The curve tting results of the
model in Eq. (2) are c1 = 0.45, c2 = 0.70, e = 0.61. This is a non-linear model, and the model is
linearized at three dierent operating condition.
Dierent controller parameters and system parameters at dierent operating condition is shown
in Table 1. A result is shown in Fig. 4 based on the Table 1 controller parameters. At the stage 1,
optimal PID controller parameters are selected [10] and a short rise time and no overshoot are
obtained. At the stage 2, a large oscillation is obtained, since controller parameters cannot be selected again. Next stage, system is divergence for dierent operating condition. As can be seen in
Fig. 3, because conventional PID controller is chosen based on the stage 1 operating condition,
system performance is unsatised for dierent operating condition. The same, we switch to the
proposed controller in stage 3, better performance than conventional PID controller can be
obtained (shown in Fig. 5). Fig. 6 shows the performance of the GPC-PID under a square wave
set point change. It is clear that a better performance is achieved through the GPC-PID control
strategy. Whereas it is dicult to apply one set of PID controller parameters to obtain good performance for the whole range of operating condition. Although tuning the controller at the point
of highest process gain is possibly to overcome system oscillation, it may result unsatised control
performance under other stages of operating condition (seen in Fig. 7). To verify the robustness to
Table 1
Three level plant models with wide range (Figs. 3 and 4)
System parameters
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3

GPC-PID scheme

Optimal PID parameter

a3

a2

a1

a0

b0

N0

N1

Nu

KP

Ki

Kd

0
0
1

0
1
0.52

1
0.6
0.18

0.2
0.02
0.02

0.2
0.02
0.04

0
0
5

0
0
1

0
0
5

0
0
3

0
0
0.7

2.8

0.1

3
Stage 2

system output

Stage 1
2

Stage 3

-1
0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

Fig. 4. PID control scheme with optimal controller parameters.

900

1000(s)

M. Xu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145

141

1.5
Stage 2

system output

Stage 1

Stage 3

0.5

0
0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000(s)

Fig. 5. GPC-PID control scheme for stage 3.

1.5
stage 2

stage 1

stage 3

system output

0.5

-0.5
0

100

200

300

400

500

600(s)

Fig. 6. System output with the proposed strategy for the whole operating condition.

system output

stage 1

stage 3

stage 2

-1
0

100

200

300

400

Fig. 7. System output with optimal PID controller.

500

600(s)

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M. Xu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145

the disturbance, a white noise with 0.1 dithers are introduced in the controlled loop. As can be
seen in Fig. 8, a satised control performance with small oscillation is obtained.
Figs. 911 show the dierent responses of xed well tuned parameters PID controller and GPCPID control strategy in the case of a temperature set point change and chilled water ow rate
uctuation.
First, we let the o coil temperature stabilize at 18.7 C, and then the set point goes up to
19.5 C with a stable ow rate for the chilled water at the time t = 250 s.
Second, we increase the air ow rate, which leads to an increase of the water ow rate. The temperature set point remains unchanged to the time t = 1500 s.
Third, we decrease the air ow rate, which leads to a decrease of the water ow rate. The temperature set point remains unchanged to the time t = 2200 s.
Based on the same operating condition, the xed well tuned PID controller is designed in spite
of the disturbance of the air ow rate. From Figs. 10 and 11, the overshoot of the output is larger
than 0.7, while the PID controller tuned via the receding horizon optimization is only up to 0.2.

1.5
stage 2

system output

stage 1

stage 3

0.5

-0.5
0

100

200

300

400

500

Fig. 8. System output with the proposed strategy in the presence of output disturbances.

Fig. 9. The air ow rate change.

600(s)

M. Xu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145

143

Fig. 10. Conventional PID control method.

Fig. 11. The GPC-PID control strategy.

5. Conclusions
A novel receding horizon optimization algorithm based on the GPC criterion and CARIMA
model, has been developed for an CCU system. Simulation and experiments show that the controller is able to reject the eects of both static and dynamic disturbances rapidly. The performance of the CCU system is improved compared with that of the conventional well tuned PID
controller. Without major change of hardware and software, the controller can self tune the
parameters of the PID controller with one degree of freedom.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the nancial support of the National Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 60474051) and Development Program of Shanghai Science and Technology Department under Grant 04DZ11008, and partly by the Specialized Research Fund for
the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China under Grant 20020248028. The authors
are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable recommendations.

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M. Xu et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 47 (2006) 132145

Appendix A
The criterion given by Eq. (6) can be rewritten as
2

J k; W rk j  ^y k j j k kW T kek

Dierentiating this expression twice with respect toW



dJ k; W 
dek; W 
T

ek; W k  1
kW
k  1 ekek
dW 

dW 

W k1

10

W k1

When k is large enough, the optimal W*(k) is very close to W*(k  1), and then the following
approximation is rational.
OW
k  W
K  1 ! 0


d2 J k; W 
d2 J k; W 

dW 2 W
k1
dW 2 W
k

11

Using Eqs. (10) and (11), the optimal vector W*(k) is written as
W
k W
k  1 Rk1 ek; W
k  1 Sk; W
k  1  kW
k  1ekeT k
where


d2 J k; W 
Rk
dW 2 W
k

12


dek; W 
Sk; W k  1 
dW W
k1

Applied the known lemma, we can conclude Eq. (9)

8

W k W
k  1 P kek; W
k  1 Sk; W
k  1  kW
k  1ekeT k
>
>
>
>
QkekeT kQk
>
>
>
P
k

Qk

k
>
>
eT kP kek 1
>
<

P k  1SkS T kP k  1
>
Qk

P
k

1

k
>
>
S T kP k  1Sk 1
>
>

>
>

>
dek;
w
>


> Sk; W k  1 
:
dW W
k1

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