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The classic technique for tuning a PID loop has become even more popular with the advent of controllers capable of tuning themselves.
Vance VanDoren, Ph.D., P.E., Control Engineering, 10/1/2006 John Zeke Ziegler and Nathaniel Nichols may not have invented the proportionalintegral-derivative (PID) controller, but their famous loop tuning techniques helped make the PID algorithm the most popular of all feedback control strategies used in industrial applications. The Ziegler-Nichols tuning techniques, first published in 1942, are still widely used today. Then, as now, the point of tuning a PID loop is to adjust how aggressively the controller reacts to errors between the measured process variable and desired setpoint. If the controlled process happens to be relatively sluggish, the PID algorithm can be configured to take immediate and dramatic actions whenever a random disturbance changes the process variable or an operator changes the setpoint. Conversely, if the process is particularly sensitive to the actuators that the controller is using to manipulate the process variable, then the PID algorithm must apply more conservative corrective efforts over a longer period. The essence of loop tuning is identifying just how dramatically the process reacts to the controllers efforts and how aggressive the PID algorithm can afford to be as it tries to eliminate errors. Ziegler and Nichols proposed a two-step method for tuning a loop. They devised a test for quantifying behavior of a process in terms of how fast and how much the process variable changes when the control effort changes. They also developed a set of empirical formulas for translating results of those tests into appropriate performance settings or tuning parameters for the controller. Ziegler and Nichols actually proposed two such techniques, both of which are described in Loop Tuning Fundamentals, Control Engineering, July 2003.
Auto-Tuning
For many years, Ziegler-Nichols tuning techniques were strictly manual operations executed whenever a new control loop was commissioned. An engineer would run a Ziegler-Nichols test, record the control effort and resulting process variable on a strip chart, divine the behavior of the process from trend line shapes, tune the loop to match the process, then start production with the new loop in automatic mode. It was tedious and repetitive work to commission every loop this way, and results werent always satisfactory. Several iterations were often necessary to generate tuning parameters that produced acceptable closed-loop performance.
To identify the ultimate period Tu and ultimate gain Pu of the process, the controller temporarily disables its PID algorithm and replaces it with an ON/OFF relay that forces the process variable to oscillate. Those two numbers quantify the behavior of the process well enough to determine how the PID controller should be tuned to obtain the desired closed-loop performance.
In the 1970s, as PID controllers evolved from electronic and pneumatic devices into fully digital microprocessors, programmers automated the Ziegler-Nichols loop tuning techniques. Theoretically, even an operator unfamiliar with tuning theory fundamentals could press a button and let the controller conduct its own process behavior test and select tuning parameters accordingly. If the resulting closed-loop behavior proved unacceptable, the operator could simply push the button again. Today, such auto-tuning or pre-tuning functions are de rigueur on commercial PID loop controllers. A recent survey of Control Engineering subscribers who buy or specify loop controllers indicted that a user-initiated auto-tuning function is the most important feature of a PID controller behind the PID algorithm itself and the ability to communicate with external devices (CE, July 2005, Loop Controllers: Lone Logic is More Connected). Auto-tuning is also described as self-tuning by some vendors, though self-tuning typically describes adaptive techniques that work not only at start-up, but during normal process operations as well. Continuous self-tuning was ranked as the fifth most important feature in the Control Engineering survey.
deadtime between the instant that the step was applied and the instant that the process variable first began to react.
Some auto-tuning PID controlers can make do with just one isolation.
These three model parameters tell the Easy-Tune algorithm everything it needs to know about the behavior of a typical process, allowing it to predict how the process will react to any corrective effort, not just step inputs. That in turn allows the Easy-Tune algorithm to compute tuning parameters to make the controller compatible with the process.
operator typically only has to select the required speed of response (slow, medium, fast), and the controller chooses appropriate rules automatically. Tuning rules.The PID algorithm (top) determines the control effort CO(t) from the process variable PV(t) and the error e(t) between the process variable and the setpoint. The controller can be made more or less aggressive by modifying the three tuning parameters the controller gain P, the integral time TI and the derivative time TD. The Ziegler-Nichols tuning rules (bottom) can be used to compute modestly aggressive values for the tuning parameters according to the values of the processs ultimate period Tu and ultimate gain Pu.
No Panacea
Unfortunately, even the highly successful strm-Hgglund version of the ZieglerNichols closed loop tuning technique cant solve all PID tuning problems. Additional enhancements are required when the sensors measurements are corrupted by noise, a disturbance interrupts the test, or process behavior varies according to the direction in which the process variable is moving. The accuracy of an auto-tuners results can also be limited if process behavior is not entirely predictable. Critics of the technology claim that only the first digit of each
computed parameter is likely to be reliable, necessitating some manual fine tuning when the closed-loop performance is tightly specified. The test itself poses a problem in applications where a limit cycle would disrupt the process to an unacceptable degree. Although the strm-Hgglund method does allow the operator to limit amplitude of the control efforts oscillations, there are some situations where artificial disturbances of any kind would be undesirable. In such cases, loop tuning is best accomplished by analyzing behavior of the process that is demonstrated by naturally-occurring disturbances and setpoint changes.
Control Engineering Reference Guide to PID Tuning (Part 1) PID (proportional-integral-derivative) control has been the state of the controller art since the 1950s and is still the predominant method in use today. Control Engineering is republishing, online, its original collection of articles on PID tuning techniques in three installments. Part 1 contains the original article, 'Optimum Settings for Automatic Controllers,' by J.G. Ziegler and N.B. Nichols. Control Engineering Reference Guide to PID Tuning (Part 2) The second in our 3-part installment reprinting Control Engineerings Reference Guide to PID Tuning. This second installment contains comparisons of controller tuning techniques and PID control algorithms; how to do PID tuning without the math; and helps answer the question: How good is that PID tuning, really? Control Engineering Reference Guide to PID Tuning (Part 3) The 3rd installment reprinting Control Engineerings Reference Guide to PID Tuning. This final installment contains information about the tuning of PID controls for different structures; background on how pneumatic instruments gave birth to automatic control; and how to perform PID controller tuning using standard form optimization.