Introduction to Control

System
By : Mohd Redzuwan
 Why Control?

• Modern society have sophisticated control

systems which are crucial to their successful
operation.
• Reasons to build control systems:
– Power amplification
– Remote control
– Convenience of input form
– Compensation for disturbance
 What is a control system?

• A  system  of  integrated  elements  whose

 function  is  to  maintain  a  process variable
at a desired value or within a desired range
of values.
• A control system is an interconnection of
components forming a system configuration
that will provide a desired system response.
• Control is automatic if it is accomplished
without manual (human) intervention, also
known as Automatic Control System.
 Process and Controller

• The process(system) is the component (or group

of components) to be controlled. Example plant,
engine, pump etc.
• The controller is the component (or group of
components) that controls the process.
• In most systems there will be an input and an
output.  This block diagram represents that. 
(Control system designers and engineers use
block diagrams to represent systems.)  Signals
flow from the input, through the system and
produce an output.
– Control system input 
• The stimulus applied to a control system
from an external source to produce a
specified response from the  control
 system.    
• Example. Central  heating  unit,  the
 control  system  input  is  the temperature
of the house as monitored by the
thermostat.
– Control system output 
• The actual response obtained from a
control system.
• For example, the temperature dropping to a
preset value on the thermostat causes the
furnace to turn on, providing heat to raise
the temperature of the ship.
• The process outputs are the variables to be
controlled.
• The process manipulations are the variables that
are adjusted by the controller in response to
feedback.
 Process Disturbances
• The process disturbances are inputs to the
process that cannot be manipulated and cannot
be predicted.
• Usually, disturbances cannot be measured (or
are difficult to measure).
 Controller

• The controller outputs are • The objective of the controller

variables that manipulate the
process.
• The controller inputs include
desired values of the process
outputs.
is to make the values of the
process outputs equal to the
desired values.
• The controller inputs may also
include the process feedback
(outputs).
 Types of control system

• The two general classifications of control

system:
– Open-loop control system.
– Close-loop control system.
 Open-loop control system.
– An open-loop control system is controlled directly, and
only, by an input signal, without the benefit of
feedback.
– The basic units of this system are an amplifier and a
actuator(example; motor etc).
• The amplifier receives a low- level input signal and amplifies
it enough to drive the motor to perform the desired job.
– The system does not observe the output of the
processes that it is controlling.
– Consequently it cannot correct any errors that it could
make and also may not compensate(minimize) for
disturbances in the system.
• Open-loop control systems are not as commonly used
because they are less accurate.

• Open-loop control is useful for well-defined systems

where the relationship between input and the resultant
state can be modelled by a mathematical formula.
• For example determining the voltage to be fed to an electric
motor that drives a constant load, in order to achieve a desired
speed would be a good application of open-loop control.
• If the load were not predictable, on the other hand, the motor's
speed might vary as a function of the load as well as of the
voltage, and an open-loop controller would therefore not be
sufficient to ensure repeatable control of the velocity.
• An open-loop controller is often used in simple processes
because of its simplicity and low-cost, especially in
systems where feedback is not critical.
– A typical example would be a conventional washing machine, for
which the length of machine wash time is entirely dependent on
the judgment and estimation of the human operator.
• Generally, to obtain a more accurate or more adaptive
control, it is necessary to feed the output of the system
back to the inputs of the controller.
 Close-loop control system.
• Utilizes an additional measure of the actual output to
compare the actual output with the desired output
response.
• The measure of the output is called the feedback
signal.
• A feedback control system is a control system that
tends to maintain a prescribed relationship of one
system variable to another by comparing functions of
these variables and using the difference as a means of
control.
 Feedback

• Feedback is a key tool that can be used to

modify the behaviour of a system.
• This behaviour altering effect of feedback is a
key mechanism that control engineers exploit
deliberately to achieve the objective of acting on
a system to ensure that the desired performance
specifications are achieved.
 Feedback control system

Correction

Measurement
Computation Comparison

• The four basic functions that occur are:

– Measurement
– Comparison
– Computation
– Correction
 Measurement
Lube oil cooling
system
Computation

Correction Comparison

Correction

Measureent
Comparison
Computation
 PRIMARY MEASURING CONTROLLING FINAL
ELEMANT ELEMENT ELEMENT ELEMENT

MEASURED INDICATION PNEUMATIC CORRECTIVE

VARIABLE OR RECORD OR ELECTRIC ACTION
OF VALUE SIGNAL

• Basically consists of four elements;

– The primary elements,
– Measuring elements,
– Controlling elements or an error detecting elements,
– A final control elements.
 The primary
elements

Measuring elements

Controlling elements or an error

detecting elements

Final control elements

 Representation of a system
• A block diagram
representation is used
present a system.
• The block diagram is
a pictorial representatio
n of the
cause and effect relatio
nship between the input
and output of a
physical system.
• A system is represented by a block, and signals
(or variables) are represented by unidirectional
arrows.
• An input signal is represented by an arrow
pointing into the block, and an output signal is
represented by an arrow pointing away from
the block.
• The variable u(t) is an input signal that can
manipulated or controlled.
• The disturbance n(t) is also an input signal but
it cannot be controlled.
• Summing point – Represent the operations of
addition and subtraction, it represented by a
circle.
• Takeoff point - Represent the signal is to be
used by more than one block or summing
point.
 PID controller
•A proportional–integral–derivative controller (PID
controller) is a generic control loop feedback mechanism
widely used in industrial control systems
•A PID controller attempts to correct the error between a
measured process variable and a desired set point by
calculating and then outputting a corrective action that
can adjust the process accordingly.
• The PID controller calculation (algorithm) involves three
separate parameters;
– The Proportional,
• The Proportional value determines the reaction to
the current error
– The Integral,
• The Integral determines the reaction based on the
sum of recent errors
– The Derivative.
• The Derivative determines the reaction to the rate
at which the error has been changing.
A block diagram of a PID controller
• By "tuning" the three constants in the PID controller
algorithm, the controller can provide control action
designed for specific process requirements.
• An automatic control system has two process variables
associated with it:  a controlled variable and a
manipulated variable:
– A controlled variable or process variable(PV) is the
process variable that is maintained at a specified
value or within a specified range.
– A manipulated variable(MV) is the process variable
that is acted on by the control system to maintain the
controlled variable at the specified value or within the
specified range.  
 PID controller theory

• The PID control scheme is named after its three

correcting terms, whose sum constitutes the manipulated
variable (MV). Hence:

where Pout, Iout, and Dout are the contributions to the output from the PID controller from each of
the three terms, as defined below.
• Proportional term(Pout)
– The proportional term makes a change to the output that is
proportional to the current error value.
– The proportional response can be adjusted by multiplying the
error by a constant Kp, called the proportional gain.

Where
Pout: Proportional output
Kp: Proportional Gain, a tuning parameter
e: Error = SP − PV
t: Time or instantaneous time (the
present)
• A high proportional gain results in
a large change in the output for a
given change in the error.
• If the proportional gain is too
high, the system can become
unstable.
• In contrast, a small gain results in
a small output response to a
large input error, and a less
responsive (or sensitive)
controller.
• If the proportional gain is too low,
the control action may be too
small when responding to system
disturbances.
• In the absence of disturbances,
pure proportional control will not
settle at its target value, but will
retain a steady state error that is
a function of the proportional gain
and the process gain.
• Integral term(Iout)
– The contribution from the integral term is proportional to both the
magnitude of the error and the duration of the error.
– Summing the instantaneous error over time (integrating the
error) gives the accumulated offset that should have been
corrected previously.
– The accumulated error is then multiplied by the integral gain and
added to the controller output.
– The magnitude of the contribution of the integral term to the
overall control action is determined by the integral gain, Ki.
• The integral term is given by:

Where
Iout: Integral output
Ki: Integral Gain, a tuning parameter
e: Error = SP − PV
τ: Time in the past contributing to the integral response
• The integral term (when added
to the proportional term)
accelerates the movement of
the process towards setpoint
and eliminates the residual
steady-state error that occurs
with a proportional only
controller.
• The intergral can cause the
present value to overshoot
the setpoint value (cross over
the setpoint and then create a
deviation in the other
direction), because its
responding to accumulated
errors from the past
• Derivative term
– The derivative control provides an output that is directly related
to the rate of change of the input and a constant that specifies
the function of differentiation.   
– The rate of change of the process error is calculated by
determining the slope of the error over time (i.e. its first
derivative with respect to time) and multiplying this rate of
change by the derivative gain Kd.
– The magnitude of the contribution of the derivative term to the
overall control action is termed the derivative gain, Kd.

Where
Dout: Derivative output
Kd: Derivative Gain, a tuning parameter
e: Error = SP − PV
t: Time or instantaneous time (the present)
• The derivative term slows the
rate of change of the controller
output and this effect is most
noticeable close to the
controller setpoint.
• Derivative control is used to
reduce the magnitude of the
overshoot produced by the
integral component and
improve the combined
controller-process stability.
• The controller is highly
sensitive to noise in the error
term, and can cause a process
to become unstable if the
noise and the derivative gain
are sufficiently large.
 Summary of PID controller
• The output from the three terms, the proportional, the integral and
the derivative terms are summed to calculate the output of the PID
controller.
• Defining u(t) as the controller output, the final form of the PID
algorithm is:

 Kp: Proportional Gain - Larger Kp typically means faster response since the
larger the error, the larger the Proportional term compensation. An excessively
large proportional gain will lead to process instability and oscillation.
 Ki: Integral Gain - Larger Ki implies steady state errors are eliminated quicker.
The trade-off is larger overshoot: any negative error integrated during transient
response must be integrated away by positive error before we reach steady state.
 Kd: Derivative Gain - Larger Kd decreases overshoot, but slows down transient
response and may lead to instability due to signal noise amplification in the
differentiation of the error.