6.PID control

6

PID Control

6.1 Introduction

The PID controller is the most common form of feedback. It was an essential element of early governors and it became the standard tool when process control emerged in the 1940s. In process control today, more than 95% of the control loops are of PID type, most loops are actually PI control. PID controllers are today found in all areas where control is used. The controllers come in many different forms. There are stand-alone systems in boxes for one or a few loops, which are manufactured by the hundred thousands yearly. PID control is an important ingredient of a distributed control system. The controllers are also embedded in many special-purpose control systems. PID control is often combined with logic, sequential functions, selectors, and simple function blocks to build the complicated automation systems used for energy production, transportation, and manufacturing. Many sophisticated control strategies, such as model predictive control, are also organized hierarchically. PID control is used at the lowest level; the multivariable controller gives the setpoints to the controllers at the lower level. The PID controller can thus be said to be the “bread and buttert't' of control engineering. It is an important component in every control engineer's tool box.

PID controllers have survived many changes in technology, from mechanics and pneumatics to microprocessors via electronic tubes, transistors, integrated circuits. The microprocessor has had a dramatic influence on the PID controller. Practically all PID controllers made today are based on microprocessors. This has given opportunities to provide additional features like automatic tuning, gain scheduling, and continuous adaptation.

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6.2 The Algorithm

6.2 The Algorithm

We will start by summarizing the key features of the PID controller. The “textbook” version of the PID algorithm is described by:

1

Z0

t

deDtE

u t

K

e t

e τ

dτ

T

6.1

D E

D E

Ti

D E

d

dt

D

E

where y is the measured process variable, r the reference variable, u is the control signal and e is the control error De ysp − yE. The reference variable is often called the set point. The control signal is thus a sum of three terms: the P-term Dwhich is proportional to the errorE, the I-term Dwhich is proportional to the integral of the errorE, and the D-term Dwhich is proportional to the derivative of the errorE. The controller parameters are proportional gain K , integral time Ti, and derivative time Td. The integral, proportional and derivative part can be interpreted as control actions based on the past, the present and the future as is illustrated in Figure 2.2. The derivative part can also be interpreted as prediction by linear extrapolation as is illustrated in Figure 2.2. The action of the different terms can be illustrated by the following figures which show the response to step changes in the reference value in a typical case.

Effects of Proportional, Integral and Derivative Action

Proportional control is illustrated in Figure 6.1. The controller is given by D6.1E with Ti [ and Td 0. The figure shows that there is always a steady state error in proportional control. The error will decrease with increasing gain, but the tendency towards oscillation will also increase.

Figure 6.2 illustrates the effects of adding integral. It follows from D6.1E that the strength of integral action increases with decreasing integral time Ti. The figure shows that the steady state error disappears when integral action is used. Compare with the discussion of the “magic of integral action” in Section Section 2.2. The tendency for oscillation also increases with decreasing Ti. The properties of derivative action are illustrated in Figure 6.3.

Figure 6.3 illustrates the effects of adding derivative action. The parameters K and Ti are chosen so that the closed-loop system is oscillatory. Damping increases with increasing derivative time, but decreases again when derivative time becomes too large. Recall that derivative action can be interpreted as providing prediction by linear extrapolation over the time Td. Using this interpretation it is easy to understand that derivative action does not help if the prediction time Td is too large. In Figure 6.3 the period of oscillation is about 6 s for the system without derivative

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Chapter 6. PID Control

	K 5
1	K 2
0	K 1	10	15	20
0	5
	K 5
	K 2
2	K 1
−2	5	10	15	20
0

Figure 6.1 Simulation of a closed-loop system with proportional control. The process transfer function is PDsE 1/Ds 1E3.

Ti 1

		Ti 2
1		Ti 5
0	Ti [	10	15	20
0	5
2	Ti 1
	Ti 2
1	Ti 5
	Ti [
0	5	10	15	20
0

Figure 6.2 Simulation of a closed-loop system with proportional and integral control. The process transfer function is PDsE 1/Ds 1E3, and the controller gain is K 1.

action. Derivative actions ceases to be effective when Td is larger than a 1 s Done sixth of the periodE. Also notice that the period of oscillation increases when derivative time is increased.

A Perspective

There is much more to PID than is revealed by D6.1E. A faithful implementation of the equation will actually not result in a good controller. To obtain a good PID controller it is also necessary to consider

218

6.3Filtering and Set Point Weighting

	Td 0.1
1	Td 0.7
0	Td 4.5	10	15	20
0	5

Td 0.7 Td 4.5 Td 0.1

2

−2

0

5

10

15

20

Figure 6.3 Simulation of a closed-loop system with proportional, integral and derivative control. The process transfer function is PDsE 1/Ds 1E3, the controller gain is K 3, and the integral time is Ti 2.

∙Noise filtering and high frequency roll-off

∙Set point weighting and 2 DOF

∙Windup

∙Tuning

∙Computer implementation

In the case of the PID controller these issues emerged organically as the technology developed but they are actually important in the implementation of all controllers. Many of these questions are closely related to fundamental properties of feedback, some of them have been discussed earlier in the book.

6.3 Filtering and Set Point Weighting

Filtering

Differentiation is always sensitive to noise. This is clearly seen from the transfer function GDsE s of a differentiator which goes to infinity for large s. The following example is also illuminating.

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Chapter 6. PID Control

EXAMPLE 6.1—DIFFERENTIATION AMPLIFIES HIGH FREQUENCY NOISE

Consider the signal

yDtE sin t nDtE sin t an sin ω nt

where the noise is sinusoidal noise with frequency ω . The derivative of the signal is

dt				D E			n		n
dyDtE		cos t		n t	cos t		a	ω cos ω		t

The signal to noise ratio for the original signal is 1/an but the signal to noise ratio of the differentiated signal is ω /an. This ratio can be arbitrarily high if ω is large.

In a practical controller with derivative action it is therefor necessary to limit the high frequency gain of the derivative term. This can be done by implementing the derivative term as

D −	sK Td	Y	D6.2E
	1 sTd/N

instead of D sTd Y. The approximation given by D6.2E can be interpreted as the ideal derivative sTd filtered by a first-order system with the time constant Td/N. The approximation acts as a derivative for low-frequency signal components. The gain, however, is limited to K N. This means that high-frequency measurement noise is amplified at most by a factor K N. Typical values of N are 8 to 20.

Further limitation of the high-frequency gain

The transfer function from measurement y to controller output u of a PID controller with the approximate derivative is

1			sTd
CDsE −K 1
	sTi		1 sTd/N
This controller has constant gain

lim CDsE −K D1 NE

s0[

at high frequencies. It follows from the discussion on robustness against process variations in Section 5.5 that it is highly desirable to roll-off the

220

6.3Filtering and Set Point Weighting

controller gain at high frequencies. This can be achieved by additional low pass filtering of the control signal by

FDsE

1

D1 sTf En

where Tf is the filter time constant and n is the order of the filter. The choice of Tf is a compromise between filtering capacity and performance. The value of Tf can be coupled to the controller time constants in the same way as for the derivative filter above. If the derivative time is used, Tf Td/N is a suitable choice. If the controller is only PI, Tf Ti/N may be suitable.

The controller can also be implemented as

1			1
CDsE −K 1	sTi	sTd	D1 sTd/NE2	D6.3E

This structure has the advantage that we can develop the design methods for an ideal PID controller and use an iterative design procedure. The controller is first designed for the process PDsE. The design gives the controller parameter Td. An ideal controller for the process PDsE/D1 sTd/NE2 is then designed giving a new value of Td etc. Such a procedure will also give a clear picture of the trade-off between performance and filtering.

Set Point Weighting

When using the control law given by D6.1E it follows that a step change in the reference signal will result in an impulse in the control signal. This is often highly undesirable therefor derivative action is frequently not applied to the reference signal. This problem can be avoided by filtering the reference value before feeding it to the controller. Another possibility is to let proportional action act only on part of the reference signal. This is called set point weighting. A PID controller given by D6.1E then becomes

0

t

u t

K

br t y t

1

Z

e τ

dτ

T

c

drDtE

−

dyDtE

6.4

E

Ti

dt

dt

D E

D E − D E

D E

d

D

where b and c are additional parameter. The integral term must be based on error feedback to ensure the desired steady state. The controller given by D6.4E has a structure with two degrees of freedom because the signal path from y to u is different from that from r to u. The transfer function

from r to u is		s		1
	U
	D E			CrDsE K b		csTd	D6.5E
	RDsE				sTi
							221

Chapter 6. PID Control

y	1.5
Output	1
	0.5
	0	5	10	15
	0
	4

Input u

3

2

1

0

0

5

10

15

Time t

Figure 6.4 Response to a step in the reference for systems with different set point weights b 0 dashed, b 0.5 full and b 1.0 dash dotted. The process has the transfer function PDsE 1/Ds 1E3 and the controller parameters are k 3, ki 1.5 and kd 1.5.

and the transfer function from y to u is
	U s		1	1		sTd
	D E	CyDsE K					D6.6E
	YDsE				sTi

Set point weighting is thus a special case of controllers having two degrees of freedom.

The system obtained with the controller D6.4E respond to load disturbances and measurement noise in the same way as the controller D6.1E

. The response to reference values can be modified by the parameters b and c. This is illustrated in Figure 6.4, which shows the response of a PID controller to setpoint changes, load disturbances, and measurement errors for different values of b. The figure shows clearly the effect of changing b. The overshoot for setpoint changes is smallest for b 0, which is the case where the reference is only introduced in the integral term, and increases with increasing b.

The parameter c is normally zero to avoid large transients in the control signal due to sudden changes in the setpoint.

6.4 Different Parameterizations

The PID algorithm given by Equation D6.1E can be represented by the

222

			6.4 Different Parameterizations
	transfer function	1	1	sTd
	GDsE K				D6.7E
			sTi

A slightly different version is most common in commercial controllers. This controller is described by

	1					TdP	1
GPDsE K P	1		D1	sTdP E K P	1				sTdP	D6.8E
		sTiP				TiP		sTiP

The controller given by Equation D6.7E is called non-interacting, and the one given by Equation D6.8E interacting. The interacting controller Equation D6.8E can always be represented as a non-interacting controller whose coefficients are given by

K		K P TiP TdP
			TiP
Ti TiP TdP					D6.9E
Td		TiPTdP
		TiP TdP

An interacting controller of the form Equation D6.8E that corresponds to a non-interacting controller can be found only if

Ti 4Td

The parameters are then given by

			p
K P		K	1		1 − 4Td/Ti
		2
			p
TiP		Ti	1	1 − 4Td/Ti			D6.10E
		2
			p
TdP		Ti	1 −	1 − 4Td/Ti
		2

The non-interacting controller given by Equation D6.7E is more general, and we will use that in the future. It is, however, sometimes claimed that the interacting controller is easier to tune manually.

It is important to keep in mind that different controllers may have different structures when working with PID controllers. If a controller is replaced by another type of controller, the controller parameters may have to be changed. The interacting and the non-interacting forms differ only

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Chapter 6. PID Control

when both the I and the D parts of the controller are used. If we only use the controller as a P, PI, or PD controller, the two forms are equivalent. Yet another representation of the PID algorithm is given by

GPPDsE k	ki	skd	D6.11E
	s

The parameters are related to the parameters of standard form through

k K ki	K	kd K Td
	Ti

The representation Equation D6.11E is equivalent to the standard form, but the parameter values are quite different. This may cause great difficulties for anyone who is not aware of the differences, particularly if parameter 1/ki is called integral time and kd derivative time. It is even more confusing if ki is called integration time. The form given by Equation D6.11E is often useful in analytical calculations because the parameters appear linearly. The representation also has the advantage that it is possible to obtain pure proportional, integral, or derivative action by finite values of the parameters.

The PIPD Controller

The controller with set point weighting can also be represented by the block diagram in Figure 6.5. To see this we introduce the transfer functions of the blocks

GPI DsE kP kPi

s

GPD DsE 1 kPd s

Notice that the proportional gain of the PD controller must be one in order to have zero steady state error. The input-output relation of the complete controller is

kP

U s

P R s

E

i

D

R s

E −

Y s

EE − D

kP

kP hP

Y s

E −

kPkP

sY s

E

s

D

E k D

D

D

d iE

D

d

D

Which shows that the controller is thus identical to the controller given

224

		6.4	Different Parameterizations
		d
r		u	y
Σ	PI	Σ	Process

			PD
r	Σ	e	Σ	y
		PI		P

PD

−1

Figure 6.5 Block diagram of a PI-PD controller. This controller is equivalent to a conventional PID controller with set point weighting.

by D6.4E. The parameters are related in the following way

k kP kPd kPi ki kPi

kd kPkPd

Ti kP kP Pd kPi kPP

ki ki Td kkPkPiPd

kP

b kP kPdhPi c 0

Following the same pattern the controller with b 0 and c 0 is sometimes called an I-PD controller, and the controller with b 1 and c 0 is called a PI-D controller.

Notice, however, that the representation given by D6.4E is much better suitable for tuning, because the parameters k, Ti and Td can first be determined to deal with load disturbances, measurement noise and process

225