Slide 46

The first point of discussion is the shortcomings associated with the use of proportional
control in the exercise

Slide 47

The primary shortcoming of proportional control is the existence of steady state

offset.
This leads to a disparity between actual and target process gain
This offset will persists no matter what unless Kc is unbounded (infinite) which is
physically unrealisable

Slide 48

Here is one example of how the offset value affected our experimental results
when a step change was introduce to the oxygen concentration from 0.922 to 1.0143
mol/dm3, the final steady state concentration value was only 0.955 which makes up
an offset value of 0.0593

Slide 49
- However, what we realised is that this issue can be abated by increasing the
magnitude of KC
- That being said, there are boundaries to how much a Kc value can be increased as the
system would become unstable once a certain threshold is surpassed
Slide 50
-Moving on to the second discussion question, which is more detrimental to a feedback
controller, a large time delay plant or a slow disturbance
- Let us first examine the impacts on the controller performance of both scenario

Slide 51

For a slow disturbance, the simple answer is that it has no impact at all
This is so as first and foremost disturbance is not part of the closed loop system
It is not measured by the feedback controller and thus has no bearing on the
performance of it

Slide 52
On the contrary a large time delay has the effect of perpetrating any disturbances
present in the system
Feedback control involves the comparison of the actual controlled variable against the
set point.
Processes with time delay are difficult to control because there is a lag between the
actual time when the controlled variable is affected and the time at which the
feedback controller detects a change in it.
Hence, corrective action will not be invoked immediately by the controller and it
would fail to negate the effects of disturbances.

Slide 53
-In addition, a larger time delay will result in a larger dead time, which is represented by teeta
- A larger value of teeta would in turn lead to a more negative phase angle as can also be seen
in the lower portion of the diagram shown.
- Thus,for a given Kc, a more negative phi would edge the AR closer and potentially
beyond 1 which would lead to closed loop instablilty as per the bode stability criterion
- Hence to avoid instability, Kc have to be reduced which would in turn mean more
sluggish response/

Slide 54
- Lastly, now we would like to examine some circumstances that a feedforward control
system over cascade or single loop feedback control system
- I will start off by elaborating on some of the limitations that exist in the feedforward
control system.

Slide 55
-

The methodology of feedforward control is anticipatory. It involves to measure the

disturbance, adjust input variable so as to maintain process variable at set point
Hence the distubance must be known and measurable which may not be so for all
cases

Slide 56
- As can be seen, the overall deviation to the process variable, Y, is the summation of
the effect of the disturbance, Yd, and the corrective measure introduced by the
feedforward controller Yu.
- For perfect control Y must be zero, that is Yd=Yu. For that to be realised, the transfer
function Gd must be known which requires knowledge of the process

Slide 57
Feedforward controller may be physically unrealizable
This can typically happen if the process and disturbance is modelled after the first
order process with time delay (FOPTD)
As the exponent of the time delay function cant be positive, the feedforward
controller only works if teeta P is less than teeta D

Slide 58
- Thus it is recommended that a feedforward control system should only be considered if the
aforementioned limitations can be overcome
Slide 59
-

A solely feedforward control system is only recommended if other control schemes

leads to closed loop instability issues
This is because feedforward controllers do not affect system stability
Hence, if the process is open-loop stable, a feedforward control system avoids closedlooped instability that might be brought about by feedback or cascade schemes.

Slide 61
- Cascade control system is another one which is widely accepted in industrial
application
- The idea of cascade control system is introducing a secondary inner feedback loop
inside a primary feedback loop
- The purpose is to pickup and rectify the disturbance before it causes deviation to the
controlled variable away from the set point