Multivariable Control System Design for Quadruple Water Tank System

Abstract

Multivariable processes are very commonly found in many industrial processes. Control of multivariable processes has always been challenging due to presence of coupling between inputs and outputs. Even after very signifcant efforts made by the research community control of coupled multivariable processes is still an open research issue. Computerized and easy to use laboratory scale set up is very essential to investigate performance of different control algorithm on multivariable processes. Quadruple tank process is simple and an ideal tool for understanding multivariable process control, in this setup interactions between two inputs - outputs of the process can be changed using two simple manual valves. An attempt is made to develop low cost, configurable, computerized and smaller size multi input multi output coupled process control laboratory test setup. The proposed set up has capability to interface with user friendly LabVIEW platform. With the help of this interface the user can easily deploy any newly developed algorithm and verify on this laboratory scale test set up. The performance of the developed set up is checked with di erent controller tuning conditions as well with different coupling condition of MIMO process. The performance confirms the functionality of the developed set up. Furthermore, problems with strong input-output couplings are investigated and control for such configuration using different control strategies like PID, decoupler design, MPC are studied.