Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Kunming, 12-15 July 2008
SELF-ADAPTIVE NEURON PID CONTROL IN EXHAUST TEMPERATURE
OF MICRO GAS TURBINE
JIANG-JIANG WANG, YOU-YIN JING, CHUN-FA ZHANG
School of Energy and Power Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Baoding 071003, China
E-MAIL: jiangjiang3330@sina.com
Abstract:
Mathematical model scheme of exhaust temperature
control in micro gas turbine is given out. To obtain better
performance, a self-adaptive neuron PID control is applied to
the exhaust temperature control in this paper. The neuron
model and learning strategy are given. The effectiveness and
efficiency of the proposed control strategy is demonstrated by
applying it to the exhaust temperature control. The different
learning velocity and neuron proportion of self-adaptive
neuron PID control are simulated to analyze the control
performance. It is found that the neuron proportion in
self-adaptive neuron PID control is the most sensitive
parameter, the learning velocities of proportion and integrator
affect the rapidity of response, overshoot and static error,
while the learning velocity of differentiator affects relatively
little to the control performance. The simulations show that
the dynamic responses of the exhaust control system can be
effectively improved and the robustness of the proposed
controller is better than that of the PID controller.
Keywords:
Neuron PID control; Self-adaptive; Exhaust temperature
control; Micro gas turbine
1. Introduction
In recent years, a growing awareness for the
environmental impact of energy consumption and power
generation is noticed. Forced by the Kyoto agreement,
many countries raise their efforts to cut greenhouse gas
emissions. As a result, some countries have enacted some
documentaries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The
China government’s goal is to reduce 95 million tons of
greenhouse gas emissions by 2010. As cogeneration is a
technique to produce heat and power in such a way that less
primary energy is needed, it will, in most cases, provide a
reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore,
now-a-day cogeneration gains more and more interest [1],
resulting in new governmental regulations and a renewed
research interest into the potential of micro turbines with
new technologies [2, 3].
978-1-4244-2096-4/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE
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Micro-turbines have generally evolved from
automotive or aerospace small turbine applications, or from
efforts to make industrial turbines smaller, and tend to fall
in the 5 to 500 kW size range [4]. They are an important
part of the evolving distributed power generation picture,
which includes stand alone generation, combined cycle
applications with fuel cells and combined heat and power
applications. The benefits of combining the thermal and
electrical outputs of a generating system are widely
recognized. Micro-turbines offer a number of potential
advantages compared to other technologies for small-scale
power generation [5]. For example, compact size and
low-weight per unit power leading to reduced civil
engineering costs, a small number of moving parts, lower
noise, multi-fuel capabilities as well as opportunities for
lower emissions (in the Combined Heat Power (CHP)
context). In addition, gas turbines enjoy certain merits
relative to diesel engines in the context of micro-power
generation. They have high-grade waste heat, low
maintenance cost, low vibration level and short delivery
time. Extracting the exhaust energy that would otherwise
be wasted increases the total system efficiency far beyond
that of fossil-fuelled utility power plants. This implies less
greenhouse gas emissions than using conventional energy
conversion technologies. Since micro turbines are already
extremely clean burning, other exhaust emissions are
reduced as well as in [6].
The micro gas turbine control system is vital to the
performance and the energy saving. Some researchers have
studied the control of gas turbine [7-15]. In past research,
most researchers have paid attention to the speed control.
Especially, the intelligent control, fuzzy control, network
control, etc, has been applied to the speed control of micro
gas turbine [12-14]. However, the exhaust temperature
control usually adopts the simple PI control [7-15]. The
intelligent control algorithm applied to exhaust temperature
is few. Pan Lei designed a neural network robustness
controller to the exhaust temperature control [15].
In this paper, micro gas turbine, used in CHP system,
 Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Kunming, 12-15 July 2008
requires good mobile tracking performance according to the
heat recovery system. So we have made further design of
self-adaptive neuron PID controller for exhaust temperature
control. The neuron control has applied to many industrial
fields [16-18]. Here the self-adaptive neuron PID control
algorithm is applied to the exhaust temperature control. The
different parameters of neuron PID control are simulated
and analyzed.
2. Exhaust Temperature Control
Figure 1 shows the control scheme for exhaust
temperature TE. C is the controller and the other parameters
is as same as [10, 11].
Figure 1. Exhaust Temperature Control
The exhaust temperature reference TER is fed to the
exhaust temperature control. The measured exhaust
temperature TEM is different to the actual exhaust
temperature TE due to the radiation shield and thermocouple
lags, which is shown in Figure 1.
The fuel supply system consists in two series-wound
valves. The first valve is and regulates the gas’s pressure
that bases on the speed. The second valve is fuel control
valve and regulates the fuel flow. The fuel signal will
regulate and change the exhaust temperature through the
combustor time delay ECR, and the turbine and exhaust
system transport delay ETD. The exhaust temperature
generally relates to the speed, N, fuel, Wf, inlet vane, v ,
ambient temperature, Tia, and can be shown as
TE = f ( N , W f , v, Tia ) (1)
Here the function is simplified as [15] and is expressed
as in Figure 1.
3. Self-Adaptive Neuron PID Controller
3.1. Neuron Model and Learning Strategy
The adaptive neuron model for model-free control is
proposed by N.Wang in 1991 as [19], which is shown in
Figure 2.
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Figure 2. Neuron Model for Control
In Figure 2, E is the surroundings of the neuron. The
neuron output s(t) can be written as:
n
s (t ) = K ∑ wi (t ) xi (t ) (2)
i =1
where, K>0 is the neuron proportional coefficient; xi (t) (i=l,
2, …, n ) denote the neuron inputs; wi (t) are the connection
weights of xi (t) and they are determined by some learning
rule. It is widely believed that a neuron self organizes by
modifying its synaptic weights. According to the well
known hypothesis proposed by D. O. Hebb [20], the
learning rule of a neuron is hence formulated as:
wi (t + 1) = wi (t ) + η pi (t ) (3)
where, η is learning velocity and η > 0 ; pi (t) denote
learning strategy.
There are two simple learning strategies in [21] as
follows:
(1) Hebbian learning, i.e.
pi (t ) = s (t ) xi (t ) (4)
It expresses that an adaptive neuron depending on its
adaptability makes actions and reflections to the unknown
surroundings.
(2) Supervised learning, i.e.
pi (t ) = z (t ) xi (t ) (5)
It expresses that an adaptive neuron, which does
forced learning under the supervision of the teacher's signal
z(t), makes actions and reflections to the unknown
surroundings.
(3) Associative learning, i.e.
pi (t ) = z (t ) s (t ) xi (t ) (6)
It expresses that an adaptive neuron, which uses the
learning way integrating Hebbian learning and supervised
learning, makes actions and reflections to the unknown
outsides with the associative search. It means that the
 Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Kunming, 12-15 July 2008

neuron self-organizes the surrounding information under

the supervision of the teacher's signal z(t) and gives the
control signal. It also implies a critic on the neuron actions.

3.2. Self-Adaptive Neuron PID Control

The PID controller has remained, by far, as the most

commonly used controller in industrial applications. The
reason is that it has a simple structure that is easy to be Figure 3. Self-adaptive Neuron PID control system
understood by engineers. Traditional PID controller has
other advantages of simple, intuitive structure and easy F is state convector, whose input is the error signal
implementation, it is widely applied in the case when e(k ) ; yr is the design input, y is the actual output, θ is the
requiring the desired system output to follow the input
value; PID controller could usually produce satisfactory valve value (here θ =0 ), ri is the target of performance or
performance if the PID parameters are adjusted properly in the recursion signal, K is the proportion factor of neuron
the system does not have very high requirement. However, and K>0.
PID controller does not work very well for the nonlinear The neuron controller has three state variables as:
and time-varying systems, because the PID parameters are
fixed after these are selected by optimization, which could x1 (t ) = e(t ) ⎫
not be self-adjusted when the system parameters changed. ⎪
x2 (t ) = ∆e(t ) ⎬ (10)
Therefore, a self-adaptive neuron PID controller is
proposed to obtain a good system performance. A typical x3 (t ) = ∆ 2 e(t ) ⎪⎭
PID controller with input e(t) and output u(t) is generally
given as: It is found that the xi (t ) (i=1,2,3) stand for physics
1 t de(t ) meaning as: x1 (t ) expresses the error of system, x2 (t ) is
u (t ) = k P [e(t ) +
Ti ∫ e(t )dt + T
0 d
dt
] (7)
first order difference and x3 (t ) expresses the second order
difference. So the control strategy can be shown:
where kp is the proportional gain, Ti is the integration time,
3
and Td is the derivative time of the PID controller.
u (t ) = u (t − 1) + K ∑ wi (t ) xi (t ) (11)
The incremental form represented as: i =1

∆u (t ) = where u (t ) is the control output of neuron after tth

1 sampling and wi (t ) is corresponding weighted coefficient
k P [e(t ) − e(t − 1) + e(t ) + Td (e(t ) − 2e(t − 1) + e(t − 2))]
Ti to xi (t ) .
(8) So (7) can be shown as follows:
When the sampling time T0 is small enough, the ∆u (t ) = K [ w1 (t )e(t ) + w2 (t )∆e(t ) + w3 (t )∆ 2 e(t )] (12)
continuous PID controller could be written in a discrete
form: Compare (9) and (12), the follows are obtained:

T0 T T0 ⎫
Kw1 (t ) = k p
∆u (t ) = k P [
Ti
e(t ) + ∆e(t ) + d ∆ 2 e(t )]
T0
(9) Ti ⎪
⎪⎪
Kw2 (t ) = k p ⎬ (13)
∆e(t ) = e(t ) − e(t − 1) T ⎪
where: Kw3 (t ) = k p d ⎪
∆ 2 e(t ) = e(t ) − 2e(t − 1) + e(t − 2) T0 ⎪⎭
To obtain a good system performance, combined the So the coefficients Kw1 (t ) , Kw2 (t ) and Kw3 (t ) are
conventional PID control algorithm and the model of
artificial neuron, the structure neuron PID control system is respectively the integral, proportional and differential
shown in Figure 3. coefficient of the neuron controller.
Neuron controller can online tune the parameters and

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 Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Kunming, 12-15 July 2008

learn through adjust the weighted coefficient. Considering controller is the adaptive control, which suits the change of
that the weighted coefficient wi (t ) relates the input, state variable or disturbance.
output and error of neuron, the weighted coefficients are
adjusted in associative learning strategy such that: 4. Simulation

wi (t + 1) = (1 − c) wi (t ) + ηi pi (t ) (14) Self-adaptive neuron PID controller and traditional

PID controller are both simulated to compare. Based on
pi (t ) = z (t )u (t ) xi (t ) (15) reference [7, 9, 10, 11], the parameters in Figure 2 are
shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Parameters value
where pi (t ) is the learning signal or the recursion K3=0.77 K4=0.8 K5=0.2 K6=0.23
signal and pi (t ) reduces gradually with control process, Kf=0 a=1 b=0.05 c=1
z (t ) is supervision of the teacher's signal z(t), and z (t ) is T4=2.5 T3=15 Tf=0.4
also the error of output, so z (t ) = e(t ) and ηi is learning ECR=0.01 ETD=0.1
velocity and ηi > 0 , c is a constant and c<1..
Put (15) into (14), it will be: The parameters of traditional PID controller are
optimized and got: k P =1.2/525, k I =0.0005, k D =0.075
ηi
wi (t + 1) − wi (t ) = −c( wi (t ) − z (t )u (t ) xi (t )) (16) and the sampling time T0 = 0.01 , which are also as the
c
initialization value of neuron PID controller.
If there are a function, f i ( wi (t ), z (t ), u (t ), xi (t )) , the
differential equation to wi (t ) is shown: 4.1. Simulation of Neuron PID and PID Control

∂f (⋅) Through simulation and research, the learning velocity

∆wi (t ) = −c (17) of integral, proportion and difference is as
∂wi (t )
follows: η I = 0.0005 , η P = 1.5 , η D = 0.1 and neuron
The above equation shows that the weighted proportion K = 1 (525 × 40) . At t=0s the exhaust
coefficient wi (t ) are modified in the negative grads of temperature reference is step from 0℃ to 525℃ and then
∂f (⋅) to wi (t ) . It can be proved that when c is adequate when t=50s the desired exhaust temperature is step from
little, wi (t ) will converge to a stable value wi* and the 525℃ to 360℃. The simulation comparison curves of
traditional PID control and self-adaptive neuron PID
error locates the allowable bound. To assure the
control are shown in Figure 4.
convergence property and robust of learning algorithm, the
above control algorithm is normalized:
3
⎫
u (t ) = u (t − 1) + K ∑ wi' (t ) xi (t ) ⎪
i =1
⎪
' wi (t ) ⎪
wi (t ) = 3 ⎪
⎪
∑ wi (t ) ⎬ (18)
i =1
⎪
w1 (t + 1) = w1 (t ) + η I z (t )u (t ) x1 (t ) ⎪
⎪
w2 (t + 1) = w2 (t ) + η P z (t )u (t ) x2 (t ) ⎪
w3 (t + 1) = w3 (t ) + η D z (t )u (t ) x3 (t ) ⎪⎭ Figure 4. Response of Exhaust Temperature Control

It is found that based on the learning signal, which
reflects the change of error and influence factors, the
neuron PID control algorithm adjust online the integral,
proportional and differential coefficient of PID, The
self-tuning PID control can obtain strong robust. So the
It is seen that the governing time of neuron PID
control is almost equal to the PID control’s. However, it is
obviously that the overshoot of PID control is greater than
the neuron PID control.

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 Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Kunming, 12-15 July 2008
4.2. Different Parameters Simulation of Neuron PID
Control
Figure 5 displays the different learning velocity of
proportion, η P , in neuron PID control. It can be seen that
bigger η P is, faster the response is and greater the
overshoot is. Relatively, bigger η P is, longer the
governing time is.
Figure 6 displays the different learning velocity of
integrator, ηi , of neuron PID control. It can be seen that
the response in different ηi is similar to the influence in
different η P .
Figure 5. Response of Neuron PID Control in Different η P
Figure 6. Response of Neuron PID Control in Different η I
Figure 7 displays the different learning velocity of
differentiator, η D , in neuron PID control. It can be seen that
the three curves are near and the learning velocity of
differentiator affects little the control performance.
In the simulation of different neuron, when K becomes
10 times than in simulation, the exhaust temperature control
system can not be stable so that K becomes 5 times. Figure
8 displays the different neuron proportion K. It can be seen
that the neuron proportion K is the most sensitive
parameter in the neuron PID control system. When K
becomes 5 times, the system surges acutely and the
performance is not well.
From the above simulations, it can be found that
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neuron proportion K is the most sensitive parameter to the
control performance, the learning velocity η P and η I affect
the rapidity of response, overshoot and static error, and the
learning velocity η D affects relatively little to the control
performance. So at the beginning of tuning the parameters
of controller, η D should be little. When other parameters are
tuned well and the response of controlled object is satisfied,
increase η D gradually and keep other parameters
invariable so that the output of system has no fluctuation
belt.
Figure 7. Response of Neuron PID Control in Different η D
Figure 8. Response of Neuron PID Control in Different K
5. Conclusion
This study has demonstrated that the self-adaptive
neuron PID control system can achieve favorable tracking
performance for the exhaust temperature control in the
micro gas turbine. The input of the neuron is selected as
three, the neuron acts in a similar way as traditional PID
controller with self-adaptive capability. Therefore,
combined both merits of PID controller and neural network
controller, the neuron PID controller has excellent
robustness and adaptively.
The neuron proportion in self-adaptive neuron PID
control is the most sensitive parameter, which should be
optimized in other intelligent algorithm. The learning
velocities of proportion and integrator affect the rapidity of
 Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Kunming, 12-15 July 2008
response, overshoot and static error, while the learning
velocity of differentiator affects relatively little to the
control performance.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial
and technical support of Key Laboratory of Condition
Monitoring and Control for Power Plant Equipment of
Ministry of Education.
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