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Introduction to Control Systems

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DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18474.29128

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 Department of Control Engineering

Introduction to Control Systems

An assignment introduced to

Dr. Farzad Hashemzadeh

By

Othman M.Hussein Anssari

PhD Student @ Control Department

Electrical Engineering College

Student No. : 140084321401

6 November 2021

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Control Systems

A control system manages, controls direct, or regulates the behavior of

devices or systems using a control loop. It can range from a home heating
control unit using a thermostat to control a domestic boiler to a large
industrial control system.

For continuous control of the modification of these processes, a feedback

controller is used. The control system compares the value or state of the
process variable being controlled with the desired value and applies the
difference as a control signal to bring the output of the process variable to
the same desired value.

One way to divide the control theories into two parts is to compare the
open-loop control system with the closed-loop control system, which is
also called the feedback control system.

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Open Control Systems

Open control systems are easy to visualize, given to the system (input),
and resulting in an (output) without any attempt to calculate whether the
output is the desired response of the system. An example of open control
systems is washing machines, it depend on a timer and not on how clean
the clothes are.

The following diagram describes open control systems where

traditionally the input is denoted (u(t)) and the response is denoted (y(t))
while the controlled system is called (plant).

u(t) Plant y(t)

Open control systems are very useful in the event that the rate of
prediction of the outputs of the system was high and the system, in
general, was safe because the inputs in the system are not able to know
whether the output is the desired response.

Closed Control Systems

In closed systems, we will use sensors to monitor the output, and then
link the readings of the sensors to the input, so we can change the input
based on the output readings. This is why these systems are also called
feedback control systems. This feedback is described by the symbol (y(t))
because under ideal conditions the sensors accurately measure the output
of the system. by subtracting the value of (y(t)) from the input by using
an aggregation node, the difference is the error coefficient (e(t)). And to
deal with the error, connect it to a microcontroller, and in turn, the
microcontroller will produce a new value to be entered on our facility or
system, and this new input is denoted by (u(t)), while the input we
provide to the system is called the reference signal and its symbol (r(t)).
The following image shows this system.

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r(t) e(t) u(t)

X Controller Plant y(t)

y(t)

Sensors

Example: Controlling The Temperature Of The Furnace

When controlling the temperature of industrial furnaces, it is usually best
to control the opening of the fuel valve "in proportion to" the current
needs of the furnace. This helps avoid thermal shock and apply heat more
effectively.

The oven heats up quickly in the under-damped state. Once the reference
point is reached, the heat stored within the heater subsystem and in the
furnace walls will keep the measured temperature rising beyond required.
After rising above the set point, the temperature drops, and eventually
heat is applied again. Any delay in reheating the heater subsystem allows
the oven temperature to drop further than the reference point and the
cycle repeats. The temperature fluctuations produced by the under-
damping furnace control system are undesirable.

In a terminally damped system, as the temperature approaches the

reference point, the heat input begins to decrease, and the rate at which
the furnace heats up has time to slow down and the system avoids
overshooting. Overrun is also avoided in the plus-damping system, but
the under-damping system is unnecessarily slow to reach the initial set
point to respond to external changes in the system, opening the oven door
as an example.

Differential Proportional Control

One of the most famous control systems is the proportional integral and
derivative controller, or in short the PID controller, and sometimes this
system is known as the three-node controller. And the reason for his fame
is to prove his success in many applications in various mechanical and
electrical fields. What distinguishes the hand controller is the cheapness

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of its manufacture and ease of use, as it does not require an

understanding of the mathematical model of the process to be controlled.

The controller calculates the error value as the difference between the
computed value (process variable) and the target value (setpoint), and this
is done by setting certain parameters. The controller algorithm includes
three separate parameters, sometimes called the three control limits, and
they are:

• Proportionality (kp(
• Integration (ki(
 Differential (kd)

These are the three nodes that must be set by the designer of the
controller, and the controller output is the algebraic sum of the three
parameters.

Some applications may require the use of one or two standards for the
PID controller, and this can be done by zeroing the rest of the parameters.
In such a case, it is called a P, i, D, PD, or PI microcontroller. In fact,
most PID controllers are originally PI controllers.

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Simulation:
To learn more about the effect of each of the three criteria of the hand, we
will apply them to a simplified simulation of a quad plane

The goal of the simulation is to make the plane fly from the ground to a
height of ten meters and maintain this height, and thus we will produce
three graphs:

The first: describes the time to reach the desired height

The second: describes the speed of the plane in relation to time

The third: describes the control effort in relation to time, and the control
effort is defined as the amount of effort that the aircraft exerts to reach its
specified goal.

Proportion Controller:

It is considered one of the easiest types of controllers, and let us suppose

that the plane has a sensor that can calculate its height. At first, the plane
is in standby mode on the ground, and after its activation, the
programmed flight path makes it fly to a height of ten meters and then
maintain this height for five seconds, and then fly in any direction to
maintain the same height.

At the first moment, the plane takes flight, the altitude error is as follows:

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Therefore, the controller senses this error and then orders the motors to
produce a proportional vertical thrust with the error as follows:

Thus, the higher the plane, the less the error and the less the input of the
controller. Many systems in our lives today are governed by second-order
differential equations and are subject to disturbances and vibrations when
responding to any change before they reach a stable state.

Rise time: The response time required to move from a low value to a high
value, often described as a percentage.

Peak time: It is the time required to reach the first overshoot point.

The maximum value for exceeding the target is given by the equation

Settling time: It is the response time required to reach and stay in a

specific range close to the steady-state value.

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Oscillation is closely related to the amount of damping that the

system contains, and the following image shows the three types of
damping.

Note: The proportional error takes into account only the present, that is,
the value of the current error only. While increasing the proportionality
criterion reduces the rise time, but it also increases the frequency of
oscillations and increases the overshoot value, and thus the
proportionality controller alone fails to make the system reach a stable
state.

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Proportionality and Integration Controller:

Often there are very strict design requirements regarding the amount of
acceptable steady-state error, so the proportionality controller alone is not
sufficient. And the way to reduce or eliminate this error is by adding the
integration criterion.

The idea is simply to increase the controller's input relative to the total
cumulative error. Therefore, the integration controller will take into
account all the previous error values. As a result, even small errors will
be amplified, causing the controller to increase the input value of the
system. In this way, the integration controller will get rid of the small
steady-state errors that the proportional controller was prone to.

The Proportional And Differential Controller:

With the addition of integration, we can reduce the stability error, but this
happened at the expense of response time and target percentage. But the
differential can try to predict the amount of error by trying to consider
future values by extrapolating the change in the value of the error and
taking into account this change, the system will reach the target point in a
smooth manner.

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Note: The integration microcontroller collected the values of all the

previous errors and this helped it to bring the system to a stable state, but
it led to an increase in the intensity of the vibration frequency and an
increase in the stability time as well.

Differential Controller

The differential controller does not affect the stability of the system, but it
tries to predict how the error will change in the future, and it is greatly
affected by noise, but it helps to reduce the stability time and reduce the
value of the overshoot.

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Controller Design Goals And Standards

Stability: Control systems are essential to the stability of the system. As

long as the input is a certain value, the output will also be a certain value.
A more comprehensive definition is what is known as asymptotic
stability, which states that a system will inevitably reach a state of
stability if it is given a specific input or initial condition. For example, if
we throw a ball from a height, the ball will inevitably rest on the ground.

Traceability: the ability of the control system to maintain the reference

signal as the difference between the reference signal and the output is the
tracking error. An example is a thermostat in air conditioners.

Durability: It is preferable that the control system is not based on a

detailed mathematical model with criteria of a high degree of accuracy,
on the contrary, it is preferable that the system be flexible and workable
over a wide range of different parameters

Turbulence: All control systems are subject to noise, disturbances, and

standard errors, and although it is important to try to reduce these
disturbances, it is also important to try to design control systems that
withstand these disturbances.

PID Controller Weaknesses

The PID controller is widely spread in the industry, as we mentioned

earlier, because of its cheapness and ease of use, as it does not require an
understanding of the mathematical model of the process to be controlled.

But one of the weaknesses of the PID controller is that it only reacts to
disturbances that occur in the system, meaning that the system must sense
an error before the controller can correct it.

Another point is that it does not deal well with systems with high dead
time or lag (dead time is the time from the moment the microcontroller
sends a signal to the moment the system receives this signal and starts
interacting).

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As mentioned before that most of the controllers are actually PI

controllers, so why not use the differential criterion, the reason for this is
that it is highly affected by noise, for example, if we have a quadrotor and
it is flying at its desired altitude. But the wind was strong that day and the
plane would swing up and down.

A low pass filter can be added to remove some of the high-frequency

noise, but this will reduce the quality of the differential controller's
performance as it depends on the response to any change in the air. Often
this requires a large amount of testing to find a balance between noise and
desired performance.

References:

[1] "Feedback and control systems" - JJ Di Steffano, AR Stubberud, IJ Williams.

Schaums outline series, McGraw-Hill

[2] Nagrath, I. J. Control systems engineering. New Age International, 2006.

[3] Nise, Norman S. Control systems engineering. John Wiley & Sons, 2020.

[4] Kuphaldt, Tony R. "Chapter 6 LADDER LOGIC". Lessons In Electric Circuits.

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