Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689
DOI 10.1007/s13369-015-1853-0
RESEARCH ARTICLE - MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
Intelligent Ratio Control in Presence of Pneumatic Control Valve
Stiction
Puneet Mishra1 Vineet Kumar1 K. P. S. Rana1
Received: 5 February 2015 / Accepted: 10 August 2015 / Published online: 7 September 2015
King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals 2015
Abstract The presence of hard nonlinearities, such as
control valve stiction, may severely degrade the plant prof-
itability by introducing limit cycles in the process variable.
This paper presents an innovative use of a recently devel-
oped intelligent controller for effective ratio control in the
presence of a sticky control valve. The intelligent controller,
stiction combating intelligent controller (SCIC), is inher-
ently a fuzzy controller which makes use of TakagiSugeno
model and changes its gain in run time to deal with stiction
nonlinearity. Some of the various advantages which SCIC
controller offers are, its simple structure, non-requirement of
process parameters estimation and its capability to provide
standalone solution to stiction nonlinearity. These qualities of
SCIC controller make it a front runner among other solutions,
for the effective ratio control in the presence of a sticky pneu-
matic control valve. The efficacy of the SCIC controller in
ratio control is experimentally verified on a laboratory scale
plant with uncertain parameters. A performance comparison
between SCIC and linear proportional integral (PI) controller
is also made for their setpoint tracking, disturbance rejec-
tion and trajectory tracking capabilities at various operating
points. Based on extensive experimental studies, it can be
concluded that SCIC controller, undoubtedly, outperformed
the linear PI controller for all investigated cases and also
efficiently handled uncertainties in the plant parameters.
B Puneet Mishra
puneet.mishra@ymail.com
Vineet Kumar
vineetkumar27@gmail.com
K. P. S. Rana
kpsrana1@gmail.com
1 Division of Instrumentation and Control Engineering,
Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, Dwarka, Sector 3,
New Delhi 110078, India
Keywords Ratio control Stiction Pneumatic control
valve Fuzzy logic Uncertainties
1 Introduction
Ratio control is commonly employed in various plants, such
as chemical industries, beverages industries, and petroleum
refineries etc. The purity of the product, manufactured by a
plant, considerably relies on the concentration of the different
input components used in the process, and hence ratio con-
trol is quite necessary for manufacturing processes. Another
instance of ratio control can be seen in distillation columns.
For the segregation of multi-component mixture and to
extract constituent elements out of the mixture, distillation
columns are commonly used. For controlling and maintain-
ing the purity level of the extracted elements, distillation
columns feedback a definite amount of the extracted element
(reflux) for which the ratio between two fluid streams flow
rate must be controlled. But the presence of the valve stiction
in the control loop may severely degrade the purity of the dis-
tillation column products. These are some of the examples
which indicate the importance of the ratio control loop in a
plant. Ratio control is generally achieved by manipulating the
flow rate of a fluid stream (controlled flow stream) according
to the flow rate of the other stream (wild flow stream) to main-
tain the desired ratio between the two. This manipulation in
the flow rate is attained through a control valve, often pneu-
matic one, due to its inertness to the inflammable liquids. Use
of a pneumatic control valve might introduce nonlinearity in
the control loop in the form of stiction. Choudhury et al. [1]
defined the term stiction, as, stiction is a property of an
element such that its movement in response to a varying input
is preceded by a static part (deadband plus stickband) fol-
lowed by a sudden abrupt jump called slip-jump. Its origin
123
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Fig. 1 Generalized valve inputoutput characteristics for an air-to-
close valve [2]
in a mechanical system is static friction which exceeds the
friction during smooth movement.
It is not hard to see that the stiction nonlinearity will
severely affect the control loop performance. A simple PI
controller will cause controller output (OP) and the process
variable (PV) to oscillate in a non-sinusoidal fashion under
the effect of a sticky valve. These undesired oscillations will
cause degradation in the product quality and the life span of
the control valve and thereby will severely reduce the plant
profitability. Typical inputoutput relationship of a sticky
control valve is shown in Fig. 1. It can be seen clearly that
a definite amount of input change is needed to reverse the
direction of the valve stem movement. Even when the valve
stem is steady, it does not respond to certain amount of input
change, when the valve stem has to travel in the same direc-
tion as of the previous. This behavior attributes to a nonlinear
characteristic in the valve. As shown in Fig. 1, the value of
change in input, essential to reverse the direction of move-
ment of the valve, is termed as stiction band (S) and is of
variable nature i.e. has different values of S at different
stem positions.
The stiction nonlinearity may introduce non-sinusoidal
oscillations in PV and in the OP as well. Figure 2 shows
typical variation of a PV in ratio control loop affected by stic-
0.8
0.7
0.6
Ratio
0.5
0.4
0.3 Setpoint
Process variable
0.2
40 60 80 100 120 140
Time (s)
Fig. 2 Limit cycles in the process variable due to valve stiction
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Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689
tion nonlinearity. Corresponding controller output is shown
in Fig. 3.
To address the problem of stiction nonlinearity, various
strategies have been proposed in the literature. Armstrong
Hlouvry et al. [3] presented an excellent survey covering
wide aspects of tribology, lubrication, physics and control.
They also discussed various compensation methods to deal
with stiction in machines, including proportional derivative
(PD) with integral control with deadband, stiff PD control,
dithering and impulsive control techniques. It may be noted
that dithering like techniques are not suitable for the pneu-
matic control valves, since it uses high-frequency pulses
as input to the valve and pneumatic control valve filters
these pulses, making the technique ineffective. Kayihan and
Doyle [4] proposed a local nonlinear controller which used
inputoutput linearization along with internal model con-
trol, to maintain the position of stem. It was claimed that
the proposed method could reduce control action chattering.
A closed-loop nonlinear Luenberger observer was also used
to predict the unmeasurable state to provide robust control
action to compensate parametric uncertainty. The proposed
method was compared to the linear PI controller in terms
of IAE, and it was found that the proposed control scheme
performed better than the PI controller. However, since the
proposed control law required exact information about the
process parameters; the technique may not yield good results
where the plant parameters are not known exactly. Gerry
and Ruel [5] suggested some measures to detect stiction and
reduce its effect on PV in a control loop. They recommended
that, for stiction detection and quantification, the valve input
can be varied in small steps, until a change in PV is detected.
As soon as a change in PV occurs, the controller output
change is a measure of stiction. They also proposed some
online measures to decrease the effect of stiction such as use
of proportional integral (PI) controller with bandgap; adjust-
ment of the positioner parameters, if installed; replacement of
integral control from PI controller with proportional control
using high proportional gain etc. Also, for a large scale plant,
100
Controller output (%)
80
60
40
20
0
40 60 80 100 120 140
Time (s)
Fig. 3 Non-sinusoidal oscillations in the controller output
Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689
implementation of these methods might become a cumber-
some work for the plant operator and thus is not suitable.
Hgglund [6] proposed that adding short pulses, also
called as Knocker pulse, of variable width and amplitude,
depending upon the instantaneous control action, may reduce
the effect of the stiction in the control loop. The method was
implemented and tested on an industrial controller and dis-
tributed control systems in a sugar refinery. It was claimed
that the proposed method was able to reduce the IAE by 55 %
and ISE by 31 % in comparison with a linear PI controller. It
was also claimed that the amplitude of oscillations was signif-
icantly reduced but on the expense of increased oscillations
frequency. The problem with the Knocker pulse method
was that, its effective implementation demanded wise selec-
tion of the amplitude, pulse width, and time between each
pulse failing which the method may not yield desired results.
Literature also suggested some methods to automate the
process of knocker pulse application but that comes at the
expense of increased stem movement. The aggressive stem
movement is not desired to avoid valve wear and tear. Srini-
vasan and Rengaswamy [7] presented an efficient stiction
compensation technique two-move approach, which also
added some value using a separate compensator in the con-
troller output to reduce the stiction effects. The control
scheme was tested on a level control loop and effective
stiction compensation was demonstrated. This compensation
scheme was highly reliant on exact measurement of stiction
measure. It was also assumed that plant is exactly modeled
and no plant and model mismatch is present, but this can-
not be guaranteed in a real-world scenario. Farenzena and
Trierweiler [8] presented a modification to the above men-
tioned two-move approach. They claimed that the proposed
method is able to achieve a faster closed-loop performance in
comparison with open loop. The proposed approach was able
to handle disturbance and setpoint change on the expense of
steady state error in PV. Mohammad and Huang [9] proposed
that through proper controller tuning, the amplitude and fre-
quency of stiction-related oscillations can be reduced on the
basis of describing function analysis. They proposed retuning
of the controller, for different combinations of plant and con-
troller, based on frequency response. They also verified their
scheme experimentally on two pilot scale plants and an indus-
trial level plant. However, in most of the cases stiction oscilla-
tions only got reduced, not completely removed and also the
method required process parameters values for the imple-
mentation of the proposed scheme. Cuadros et al. [10] pre-
sented an improved method for stiction handling in control
valves. In this work, it was assumed that valve and the process
dynamics are similar while setting the compensator parame-
ters, which is not always true. Their approach could handle
disturbances but was unable to perform well in cascade loop,
where setpoint to the flow loop could move rapidly [10].
679
Two major deductions can be inferred by observing the lit-
erature survey presented above. First, most of the proposed
schemes for stiction compensation used an estimation of the
process parameters for their effective implementation and
second, use of a separate compensator was required other
than the controller which changes the controller output in a
way so as to reduce the effect of stiction. The major prob-
lem, which reduces the easy and effective implementation
of the compensation schemes present in the literature, is
the presence of uncertain plants, whose exact model cannot
be obtained. So, in order to address these aspects recently
a Fuzzy logic-based intelligent controller, called as Stic-
tion combating intelligent controller (SCIC), is proposed to
counteract the stiction effect by Mishra et al. [2]. The SCIC
controller is a TakagiSugeno (TS) based fuzzy controller.
The effectiveness of the proposed controllers was validated
on a flow control loop having sticky pneumatic control valve.
It was demonstrated that the proposed controller efficiently
handled the stiction nonlinearity in servo as well as regu-
latory problems for various operating point conditions. The
comparison was made with a linear PI controller in terms
of ITAE and SCIC controller outperformed PI controller in
each case study. Further, the major advantage of this SCIC
controller is that it does not require estimation of the process
parameters and the stiction compensation can be achieved
through the control logic itself. As discussed earlier that the
SCIC controller in [2] was investigated for constant flow set-
points only, this work extends the use of SCIC controller
for ratio control. Ratio control loop is ubiquitous in process
industries and is generally complex in nature due to time
varying behavior of the flow setpoints; either due to their
dependence on wild flow streams which varies frequently
with time or due to requirement of the time varying ratio
setpoints itself. Further, the complexity of the ratio control
loops escalate as these loops may employ pneumatic control
valves as final control elements which often suffer from stic-
tion nonlinearity. The current work is an attempt to assess
the capability of the SCIC controller for effective ratio con-
trol in such scenarios. Rigorous experimental analysis for
setpoint tracking, disturbance rejection, robustness testing
and trajectory tracking capability of the SCIC controller for
ratio control is performed and has been presented in this
work.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 presents
the detailed literature survey on various schemes for stic-
tion compensation and the problem formulation. Section 2
describes the plant used in the current work. Section 3
presents a brief introduction of SCIC controller earlier devel-
oped by the authors. Following which, Sect. 4 presents
detailed experimental analysis of SCIC controller for ratio
control. In last, Sect. 5 concludes the paper.
123
680
Fig. 4 Schematic diagram of
Pneumatic control
the plant [2]
valve
Wild flow stream
Overhead tank
Reservoir
Re
tank
2 Plant Description
For the experimental verification of control algorithms, a lab-
oratory scale pilot plant is employed in the current work.
The plant has two flow streams out of which one offers
manipulation in the flow rate using a pneumatic control
valve. Turbine-type flow sensors are used to convert the flow
rate into corresponding voltage which can be fed back. Fur-
ther, a reservoir tank and a pump are used to circulate the
medium (water) in the pipes. The flow stream which is not
available for the automatic manipulation is termed here as
wild flow stream and can be set at a fixed flow rate using
hand valves. Both fluid streams can offer 200 LPH at max-
imum opening of the valves. Figure 4 shows a schematic
diagram for the process. For the data acquisition and inter-
facing of process with computer, a DAQ card manufactured
by National InstrumentsTM is employed in conjunction with
LabVIEWTM software, which was used for the implementa-
tion of control algorithm and experimental analysis. A brief
description about different equipments used in this study is
presented in Table 1.
The plant used in this work has a nonlinear pneumatic
control valve, i.e. has stiction nonlinearity, due to which dif-
ferent variables in the control loop may have non-sinusoidal
oscillations, as shown in Fig. 2. To verify that the control
valve is sticky, it is essential to plot its inputoutput rela-
tionship. To obtain this relationship the valve was excited
with a slowly varying pressure signal. Three different cases
were considered for three different input pressure signals.
For each case, the pressure signal can be written as Pin =
Poffset + Ppeak sin( t/30), where Pin is the applied pres-
sure, Poffset is taken as 9 psi for all cases, and Ppeak varies
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Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689
V6 Controlled flow
stream
Turbine type flow
V3 V1 sensors
Manually
operated valve
Rotameters
V4 V2
V5
Pump
for each case and is taken as 2.4, 4.8 and 6 psi for case 1, 2,
and 3, respectively. The obtained inputoutput curves for the
pneumatic control valve used in this work are shown in Fig. 5.
Both input and output values are normalized, where input to
the valve is taken as the applied pressure and the output of the
valve as the flow rate through the control valve. It can be eas-
ily observed from the three inputoutput characteristic plots
shown in Fig. 5, that the value of stiction band varies with the
instantaneous valve stem position or in other words stiction
band has different values for different operating points. So, it
is desired to design a control algorithm which can deal with
such type of uncertainties in the plant parameters. Figure 6
shows the snapshot of the plant used in this study. A zoomed
version of the plant snapshot showing the pneumatic control
valve and the streams is shown in Fig. 7.
3 SCIC Controller Description
The applications of fuzzy logic have been presented in the
literature as a solution to various problems in the fields rang-
ing from nonlinear control, system identification, and pattern
recognition to document classification [11] etc. Inclusion of
fuzzy logic can significantly increase the reliability and pre-
ciseness of control systems by introduction of human expert
knowledge. In the current work also, the same characteristic
of the fuzzy logic has been explored to efficiently control the
ratio of two flow streams in the presence of a sticky pneu-
matic control valve. Using an intelligent controller, which
uses TakagiSugeno fuzzy model for its implementation,
expert knowledge has been incorporated. The implemented
expert knowledge is in the form of corrective action which
Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689 681

Table 1 Details of various

S. No. Component name Quantity Specification
components in plant
1. Pneumatic control valve 1 Air-to-close type
1/2 inch size
Equal percentage
2. Turbine-type flow rate transducer 2 Converts 0200 LPH to 02.5 V
3. Rotameter 2 Acrylic body
Range: 0 to 200 LPH
1/2 inch size
4. Distribution motor pump 1 0.062 kW, 1/12 HP, 2800 RPM
1/2 inch outlet
Range: 500 LPH
Brass impeller
Supply: 230 V, 50 Hz
5. V/I convertor 1 Converts 02.5 V to 420 mA
6. I/P convertor 1 Converts 420 mA to 315 psi
7. Data acquisition card 1 Manufacturer: National InstrumentsTM
PCI-6221 DAQ card
Analog inputs: 8 Differential, 16 Single
ended (Range : 10 to 10 V)
Analog outputs: 2
Maximum sampling rate: 250 kS/s
8. Personal computer 1 Intel CoreTM 2 Duo processor
2.20 GHz, 1 GB RAM
Equipped with LabVIEWTM software

100
Case 1
80 Case 2
Case 3
Flow rate (%)

60 Valve
closing
40
Valve
20 opening

0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Valve input (%)

Fig. 5 Valve inputoutput characteristics [2]

Fig. 6 Snapshot of the plant depicting various components of the lab-

has to be taken in order to compensate for the stiction non-
linearity. This corrective action assumes the form of run time
variation in the strength of integral gain of controller partic-
ularly when the process variable approaches setpoint with
near zero rate to avoid limit cycles. As the use of fuzzy
logic controller can efficiently handle the vagueness in the
measurement information, the current work uses it in the
control scheme implementation to deal with vagueness in
the measurements of linguistic variables i.e. error and rate of
change of error. Overall fuzzy logic has helped the fusion of
expert knowledge and control engineering together to deal
with effective and efficient control of nonlinear process.
oratory scale plant
This work proposes SCIC controller [2] as a solution of
stiction in pneumatic control valves which are often used to
control flow rates in various industrial plants. In this paper,
SCIC controller is evaluated for effective ratio control of two
fluid streams employing a sticky pneumatic control valve.
The extensive details of SCIC controller developed by the
authors have been given in [2]. The SCIC controller uses
fuzzy logic to handle the nonlinearity in the control loop by
varying its gain in run time. SCIC controller is inherently a
TS fuzzy PI controller with only two linguistic input vari-

123
682
Fig. 7 Zoomed capture of the laboratory scale plant
ables, error (e) and rate of change of error (r ) and has four
functions composed of the input linguistic variable in the con-
sequent part of the controller. Each input linguistic variables
is defined by two Gaussian membership functions, ZERO
(Z) and NOT ZERO (NZ), with their membership function
defined by the following expressions,
 
(e ce )2
Z (e) = exp (1)
2e2
 
(r cr )2
Z (r ) = exp (2)
2r2
NZ (e) = 1 Z (e) (3)
NZ (r ) = 1 Z (r ) (4)
where Z is membership value for ZERO membership func-
tion,
NZ is membership value for NOT ZERO membership
function,
e and r are spread of Gaussian membership functions
for error and rate of change of error, respectively.
ce and cr are center of Gaussian membership functions
for error and rate of change of error, respectively.
The instantaneous error e(nT ) and r (nT ) can be defined
as,
e (nT ) = Fdesired (nT ) Fcont (nT ) , (5)
r (nT ) = [e (nT ) e (nT T )] /T (6)
where T is the sampling period and is taken as 0.1s in this
study, Fdesired is the setpoint to ratio controller and is calcu-
lated as RSP Fwild , Fwild is the flow rate of the wild fluid
stream, Fcont is the flow rate of the controlled flow stream
and n = 0, 1, 2, 3. . .. It is worth mentioning here, that the
controller is implemented for the variables represented in
voltages, obtained from different transducers.
IF-THEN rules of SCIC controller, governing the behavior
of controller are stated as,
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Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689
Rule 1: If e(nT ) is NZ and r (nT ) is NZ then u 1 (nT ) =
K p r (nT ) + K i e (nT )
Rule 2: If e(nT ) is Z and r (nT ) is NZ then u 2 (nT ) =
K p r (nT ) + (K i /) e (nT )
Rule 3: If e(nT ) is NZ and r (nT ) is Z then u 3 (nT ) =
K p r (nT ) + K i e (nT )
Rule 4: If e(nT ) is Z and r (nT ) is Z then u 4 (nT ) =
K p r (nT ) + (K i /) e (nT )
where u i is the rate of change of SCIC controller output
in each rule. and are modifying factors, both greater
than one, which change the controller output in a nonlinear
fashion. K p and K i are the proportional and integral gain
of the SCIC controller and may have the same values as of
a linear PI controller. To generate the crisp output, product
T -norm is used, and rate of change of SCIC controller output
u SCIC (nT ) can be evaluated as,
u SCIC (nT )e(nT ),r (nT )

4
= u i (e (nT ) , r (nT )) i (e (nT ) , r (nT )) (7)
i=1
where i is called fuzzy basis function [12] and is defined as,
i (e (nT ) , r (nT ))
i (e (nT ) , r (nT )) = 4 (8)
j=1 (e (nT ) , r (nT ))
j
and, i = 1, 2, 3, 4.
Further, to obtain the instantaneous controller output,
u SCIC (nT ), we have,
u SCIC (nT ) = T u SCIC (nT ) + u SCIC (nT T ) (9)
The controller was designed keeping in mind that any
established analytical tuning method can be applied to the
designed controller also. In this work Ziegler Nichols (ZN)
tuning method [13] is used to obtain the K p and K i values,
since, ZN tuning method is still widely practiced in industries
to achieve the conventional proportional integral derivative
controllers parameters. But ZN tuning may result in severe
overshoot and large oscillations in the controlled variable.
So, in order to reduce the aggressive action of the ZN tuned
controller, while keeping the same values of proportional and
integral gains, run time variation in the membership function
of error is incorporated in the SCIC controller. This run time
variation in membership functions of e, gives more weight
to certain rules (Rule 2 and Rule 4) in the rule base of the
SCIC controller and hence effectively reduces aggression in
the controller output as and when desired. The run time vari-
ation in the e membership functions is achieved by varying
e , using the following relationship,
Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689 683

e (e) 1.0

Membership function value ()

Z
emax
|e| emax 0.8 NZ
=
emin  |e| emin

emax emin (|e| emin ) + emin emin < |e| < emax 0.6
emax emin

0.4
Figure 8 shows variation in e for different values of the
absolute error. Figures 9, 10 and 11 show the variation in 0.2
linguistic variables membership functions. An indication of
0.0
the controller output change with respect to e and r is -2 -1 0 1 2
Rate of change of error (r)
shown in Fig. 12 through a surface.
Fig. 11 Membership function value variation for rate of change of
error (r = 0.1 and cr = 0)
1.0

0.8

0.6
e

0.4 0.10

0.05
0.2
0.00
0 0.05 0.1
0.0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
Absolute error (|e|)

Fig. 8 Variation in e

1.0
Z
Membership value ()

Fig. 12 Variation of controller output change with respect to e and

0.8 NZ
r
0.6
Figure 13 shows the block diagram of the closed-loop
0.4
ratio control scheme using SCIC controller where pneumatic
0.2 control valve receives the pressure signal through an I/P con-
vertor. The SCIC controller generates the controller action
0.0 corresponding to the instantaneous e and r . The setpoint
-2 -1 0 1 2
Error (e) to the ratio controller (Fdesired ) is obtained by multiplying
the desired ratio to the flow rate of the wild fluid stream flow
Fig. 9 Membership function value variation for error (for emax = 0.8 rate (Fwild ).
and ce = 0)
Membership function value ()

1.0
Z 4 Experimental Studies
0.8 NZ
Extensive run time experiments were carried out to prove
0.6
the effectiveness of the SCIC controller to maintain ratio
0.4 of the flow rate of two streams at the desired value. These
investigations include rigorous testing of SCIC controller
0.2 for setpoint tracking, disturbance rejection, robustness test-
0.0 ing and a trajectory tracking. This section details about the
-0.5 -0.3 -0.1 0.1 0.3 0.5 performance testing of the SCIC controller for setpoint track-
Error (e)
ing, disturbance rejection at the tuned operating point and at
Fig. 10 Membership function value variation for error (for emin = other operating points also. For the robustness testing the
0.02 and ce = 0) value of Fwild was changed from the one, at which the con-

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684 Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689

Fig. 13 Ratio control scheme

employing SCIC controller

trollers were initially tuned and rigorous testing for this case Table 2 SCIC controller parameters values
was performed in terms of setpoint tracking and disturbance Parameter name Parameter value
rejection. The efficiency of the controllers was also tested
for a time varying ratio setpoint (RSP ) profile for trajectory r 0.100
tracking capability analysis. emax 0.800
emin 0.020
emax 1.000
4.1 Controller Tuning and Analysis for RSP = 1.00 at emin 0.015
Fwild = 40 % cr 0.000
ce 0.000
Tuning for the proportional and integral gain of linear PI Kp 3.370
controller, K PI PI
p and K i , respectively, was performed by ZN Ki 3.040
tuning criteria at an operating point specified by RSP of 1 1000
at wild flow rate of 40 %. The tuned values of K PI PI
p and K i 1.10
are 3.370 and 3.040, respectively. Negative values of the
proportional and integral gain indicate that the controller is
designed for the reverse action as the pneumatic control valve absolute error (ITAE) for PI and SCIC controller are 33.7210
used in the study is air-to-close type. The values for K p and and 4.3307, respectively. The ITAE was calculated for a
K i used in SCIC controller were kept same as that of linear period of 140 s i.e. from 10 to 150 s. It can be clearly inferred
PI controller and other parameters values of SCIC are kept from the obtained results that SCIC controller outperformed
same as in [2]. The parameter values of SCIC controller are PI controller and did not introduce any stiction caused oscil-
presented in Table 2. For all the experiments, controlled flow lations in PV.
stream was initially taken to a fixed flow rate by manually Further, in order to study the effectiveness of a control
providing a supply of 15 psi for 10 s to the pneumatic control scheme, it is essential to investigate that how controller reacts
valve, so as to obtain same initial conditions, after which the to disturbances in the control loop and its capability must be
loop was switched to automatic mode. tested to mitigate the undesirable effects of disturbances on
Figure 14 shows the setpoint tracking response of the the controlled variable. To investigate this aspect, a simu-
tuned PI and SCIC controller for RSP = 1 at Fwild = 40 %. lated dynamic disturbance was injected in the control loop
The corresponding flow rate variations in different fluid and was added to the controlled fluid stream flow rate signal.
streams are shown in Fig. 15. The corresponding controller In the current work, the disturbance transfer function was
output is shown in Fig. 16. The integral of time weighted taken as [1/(s+1)], and the magnitude of disturbance was

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Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689 685

1.5 1.4

1.2
1.0
1.0

Ratio
Ratio

1.2
0.8
0.5 1.0
Setpoint Setpoint
0.8 0.6 PI controller
10 20 30 40 PI controller
SCIC controller SCIC controller
0.0 0.4
70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150
10 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Time (s)
Time (s)
Fig. 17 Ratio variation for RSP = 1.00 at Fwild = 40 % for distur-
Fig. 14 Ratio variation for RSP = 1.00 at Fwild = 40 % for setpoint
bance rejection
tracking
60 60 Wild flow rate
Flow setpoint

Flow rate (%)

50 PI controller
Flow rate (%)

40 SCIC controller
40
50
Wild flow rate 30
20 40
30
Flow setpoint
10 20 30 40
PI controller 20
SCIC controller 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150
0 Time (s)
10 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Time (s)
Fig. 18 Flow rate profiles for RSP = 1.00 at Fwild = 40 % for distur-
bance rejection
Fig. 15 Flow rate profiles for RSP = 1.00 at Fwild = 40 % for setpoint
tracking 100
PI controller
100
Controller output (%)

80 SCIC controller
Controller output (%)

80
60
60
40
40
20
20 PI controller 0
SCIC controller 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150
0 Time (s)
10 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Time (s)
Fig. 19 Controller output for RSP = 1.00 at Fwild = 40 % for distur-
bance rejection
Fig. 16 Controller output for RSP = 1.00 at Fwild = 40 % for setpoint
tracking
loop. Figure 18 shows different flow rate profiles for the cor-
10 % of maximum flow rate, which was applied at t = 75 s. responding case. Controller output is shown in Fig. 19. The
The reason for taking simulated disturbance was the fact that ITAE obtained for PI and SCIC controller is 14.1877 and
for analysis purpose, it was nearly impossible to replicate 1.9295, respectively. For the disturbance rejection studies,
the disturbance for each experiment with same magnitude the ITAE calculation was done for a period of 75s i.e. from
and application time, which was essential to build a com- 75s to 150s.
mon ground for quantitative comparison between the two
controllers. Figure 17 shows the run time variation in the 4.2 Setpoint Tracking Analysis for Other RSP
achieved ratio for RSP = 1.00 at Fwild = 40 %. It can at Fwild = 40 %
be clearly seen from the figure that PI controller exhibited
more strong oscillatory behavior after the application of the For further testing of setpoint tracking ability of SCIC con-
disturbance, but SCIC controller not only suppressed the dis- troller in the entire operating region, some other experiments
turbance but also removed stiction-based oscillation from the were also carried out for different values of RSP ranging from

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686 Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689

1.2 100

Controller output (%)

1.0 80
0.8
60
Ratio

0.6
40
0.4
Setpoint 20 PI controller
0.2 PI controller
SCIC controller
SCIC controller 0
0.0 10 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
10 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Time (s)
Time (s)
Fig. 22 Controller output for RSP = 0.75 at Fwild = 40 % for setpoint
Fig. 20 Ratio variation for RSP = 0.75 at Fwild = 40 % for setpoint
tracking
tracking

96.0063
50 PI controller SCIC controller

40 100
Flow rate (%)

41.1014
33.721
30

20.7232
ITAE

13.0939
50

7.5626
6.7261
5.0076

4.7233

4.3307
20 Wild flow rate
Flow setpoint
10 PI controller 0
SCIC controller 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50
0
10 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Ratio setpoint
Time (s)
Fig. 23 ITAE comparison for setpoint tracking for different RSP at
Fig. 21 Flow rate profiles for RSP = 0.75 at Fwild = 40 % for setpoint Fwild = 40 %
tracking
1.0

0.50 to 1.50 in steps of 0.25. For a typical example the PV 0.9

response, for RSP = 0.75, is shown in Fig. 20. The flow
rate variations in different streams are shown in Fig. 21. 0.8
Ratio

The corresponding controller output is shown in Fig. 22.

0.7
For this particular case, the ITAE achieved for PI and SCIC
Setpoint
controller are 20.7232 and 4.7223, respectively. Further, the 0.6 PI controller
enhancement in attaining effective ratio control, at all operat- SCIC controller
ing points for the setpoint tracking studies, is supported by the 0.5
70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150
ITAE improvement shown in Fig. 23 for different setpoints at Time (s)
Fwild = 40 %. It can be clearly seen from the obtained results
Fig. 24 Ratio variation for RSP = 0.75 at Fwild = 40 % for distur-
that SCIC controller outperformed PI controller completely bance rejection
irrespective of the desired ratio setpoint and was also able to
restrain stiction induced limit cycles.
are shown in Fig. 25. The corresponding controller output is
4.3 Disturbance Rejection Analysis at Other RSP shown in Fig. 26. The ITAE achieved by PI controller for
for Fwild = 40 % this particular case is 10.3724 which shrink to only 1.0718
for SCIC controller. Further, the ability of SCIC controller in
Some other experiments were also carried out for different mitigating the disturbance effects efficiently, in comparison
values of RSP ranging from 0.50 to 1.50 in steps of 0.25 to PI controller, is well reflected by the ITAE improvement
for complete testing of disturbance rejection ability of SCIC shown in Fig. 27 for different setpoints at Fwild = 40 %. It
controller. For a typical example, where disturbance mag- can be clearly seen from the obtained results that SCIC con-
nitude was taken as 10 % and was applied at t = 75 s for troller outperformed PI controller completely for disturbance
a RSP of 0.75, the ratio variations for both controllers are rejection irrespective of the value of RSP and was also able
shown in Fig. 24. The flow rate variations in different streams to effectively restrain stiction induced limit cycles.

123
Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689 687

50
Wild flow rate Wild flow rate
30 Flow setpoint
Flow setpoint
PI controller

Flow rate (%)

PI controller
Flow rate (%)

40 SCIC controller
SCIC controller 20

30 10

20 0
70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 10 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Time (s) Time (s)

Fig. 25 Flow rate profiles for RSP = 0.75 at Fwild = 40 % for distur- Fig. 29 Flow rate profiles for RSP = 0.50 at Fwild = 20 % for setpoint
bance rejection tracking
100
100

Controller output (%)

80
Controller output (%)

80
60
60
40
40

20 20 PI controller
PI controller
SCIC controller SCIC controller
0 0
70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 10 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Time (s) Time (s)

Fig. 26 Controller output for RSP = 0.75 at Fwild = 40 % for setpoint Fig. 30 Controller output for RSP = 0.50 at Fwild = 20 % for setpoint
tracking tracking

PI controller SCIC controller 4.4 Robustness Testing

14.1877

11.2626

20 It is a well known fact that the parameters of a nonlinear

10.3724

10.5621

system varies at different operating point. To ensure the cred-

6.7772
ITAE

3.8934

ibility of a controller, it must also be tested for such parameter

1.9295

10
1.8153
1.0718
1.4142

variations. To address this aspect, both the controllers were

tested at a different wild flow rate, Fwild = 20 %, for different
0
values of RSP for setpoint tracking and disturbance rejec-
0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50
tion. The setpoint tracking ability analysis for RSP ranging
Ratio setpoint
from 0.50 to 1.50 is performed. Figure 28 shows ratio vari-
Fig. 27 ITAE comparison for disturbance rejection for different RSP ation for setpoint tracking for RSP = 0.50 at Fwild = 20 %.
at Fwild = 40 % Figure 29 shows flow rate profiles for wild stream, setpoint,
and controlled stream for this setpoint tracking study. The
1.0
corresponding controller output for PI and SCIC controller
0.8 are also shown in Fig. 30. Figure 31 shows the ITAE compar-
ison for setpoint tracking study. Further disturbance rejection
0.6 study is also performed for various values of RSP , again rang-
Ratio

ing from 0.50 to 1.25 at Fwild = 20 %. The variation in ratio;

0.4 different flow rate profiles and the corresponding controller
Setpoint output are shown in Figs. 32, 33 and 34, respectively. ITAE
0.2 PI controller comparison shown in Figs. 31 and 35 for setpoint tracking
SCIC controller
0.0 and disturbance rejection analysis, respectively, support the
10 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Time (s) finding that SCIC controller performed far better than the PI
controller for both cases. Results from the extensive run time
Fig. 28 Ratio variation for RSP = 0.50 at Fwild = 20 % for setpoint experiments demonstrated that for both analyses, i.e. setpoint
tracking tracking and disturbance rejection, the SCIC controller was

123
688 Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689

PI controller SCIC controller 100

58.4302
53.1372

45.9395

Controller output (%)

80

38.5302
60

28.7574
60
ITAE

40

9.4692

8.4328
9.5700
5.8798
4.3333
40
20

0 20 PI controller
0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50 SCIC controller
Ratio setpoint 0
70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150
Time (s)
Fig. 31 ITAE comparison for setpoint tracking for different RSP at
Fwild = 20 % Fig. 34 Controller output for RSP = 0.50 at Fwild = 20 % for distur-
bance rejection
1.0
PI controller SCIC controller

19.6526
0.8

15.6149
13.7893
11.1932
0.6 20

9.3056
Ratio

ITAE

3.6645
3.1465
3.1025
2.6709

2.1598
0.4
10
Setpoint
0.2 PI controller 0
SCIC controller 0.50 0.75 1.00 1.25 1.50
0.0
70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 Ratio setpoint
Time (s)
Fig. 35 ITAE comparison for disturbance rejection for different RSP
Fig. 32 Ratio variation for RSP = 0.50 at Fwild = 20 % for distur- at Fwild = 20 %
bance rejection

30 1.0
Wild flow rate
25 Flow setpoint 0.8
PI controller
Flow rate (%)

20 SCIC controller 0.6

Ratio

0.8
15 0.4
0.7 Ratio profile
10 0.2
0.6 PI controller
60 70 80
5 SCIC controller
0.0
10 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
0 Time (s)
70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150
Time (s)
Fig. 36 Ratio variation at Fwild = 40 % for trajectory tracking
Fig. 33 Flow rate profiles for RSP = 0.50 at Fwild = 20 % for distur-
bance rejection
60
Wild flow rate
able to handle the varying nature of parameters without fail in Flow setpoint
all cases and was also able to curb stiction-based limit cycles PI controller
Flow rate (%)

40
on other operating points. SCIC controller

4.5 Trajectory Tracking Capability Analysis 20

It is generally desired that ratio of two component streams

should follow a defined trajectory to produce a specified end 0
10 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
product. In such cases the setpoint to the ratio controller Time (s)
varies with time according to a predefined profile. To inves-
Fig. 37 Flow rate profiles variation at Fwild = 40 % for trajectory
tigate the effectiveness of the PI and SCIC controller in this
tracking
type of scenario, following trajectory was used, as in (10).

123
Arab J Sci Eng (2016) 41:677689 689

100 ZieglerNichols tuning rules, which makes it quite compat-

ible for industrial applications. The additional advantage,
Controller output (%)

80
which SCIC controller offered, is its ability to perform well
60 in uncertain environments, as it does not require model para-
meter estimation. The effectiveness of the SCIC controller
40 for ratio control is verified on a laboratory scale plant, for
setpoint tracking, disturbance rejection, robustness testing
20 PI controller
and trajectory tracking capability. For all the studies, it was
SCIC controller
0 observed that the SCIC controller outperformed PI controller
10 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
Time (s) in terms of integral of time weighted absolute error and
suppressed any stiction induced limit cycles in the process
Fig. 38 Controller output variation at Fwild = 40 % for trajectory variable and controller output.
tracking analysis


0.50
 0.3
10 t < 55

References


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corresponding flow rate variations and the controller output
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tracking ability analysis, the ITAE achieved for PI controller
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improvement of nearly 77.12 %. It is clearly seen from the
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to some predefined profile. In contrast to this, linear PI con-
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5 Conclusion
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technique, namely stiction combating intelligent controller
(SCIC), is explored for effective control of ratio in a nonlin-
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stiction present in pneumatic control valve. The SCIC con-
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specifically designed to reduce the deteriorating effects of
the sticky pneumatic control valve. Further, the SCIC con-
troller was tuned using well-established and widely practiced
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