Design and PLC implementation of nonlinear PID cControllers for control of nonlinear processes

Abstract

A new control strategy for control of the nonlinear process of Dissolved Oxygen (DO) concentration in the aerobic tank of wastewater treatment process is proposed. It provides means to improve the performance of the Linear Proportional Integration and Derivative (LPID) controller by extending it to a Nonlinear Proportional Integration and Derivative (NLPID) controller. The aim of the thesis is to develop methods, algorithms and software for design, simulation, and programmable logic controller (PLC) implementation of NLPID controllers in order to control the nonlinear process of dissolved oxygen. The thesis investigates the possibilities the widely used in theory and industry methods for the design of the LPID controllers for linear processes as Ziegler- Nichols and Pole Placement, to be applied to the design of NLPID controllers for the nonlinear process of DO concentration. Three cases are considered: Case 1: Application of the values of the parameters the linear PID controller designed by the Ziegler-Niched method for the linearized DO process model to be used as parameters of the nonlinear PID controllers to control the DO nonlinear process. Case 2: Application of the values of the parameters of the linear PID controller designed by the Pole placement method for the linearized DO process model, to be used as parameters of the nonlinear PID controller to control the nonlinear DO process. Case 3: Novel, proposed in the thesis, method based on the Pole placement method for direct design of the parameters of the linear and nonlinear PID controllers to control the nonlinear DO process. Software is developed to simulate in MATLAB environment the behavior of the closed loop DO process for the considered cases of controller designs. The results of the simulations show that in the Case1 and the Case 2 it is not possible to use the values of the LPID controller parameters designed for the linearized DO process, directly to control the nonlinear process by the NPID controllers. Additional tuning for some of the parameters is needed. The simulation in the Case 3 shows the excellent behaviors of the closed loop system for all linear and nonlinear PID controllers which prove that the new method is effective and applicable. Real-time simulations of the closed loop system are done in a TwinCAT 3 simulation environment of the Bechkoff EX5020 PLC. The deliverables of the thesis are applicable to many type nonlinear processes in chemical, manufacturing, and other industries.