IMC based robust PID controller tuning for disturbance rejection

It is well-known that the IMC-PID controller tuning gives fast and improved set point response but slow disturbance rejection. A modification has been proposed in IMC-PID tuning rule for the improved disturbance rejection. For the modified IMC-PID tuning rule, a method has been developed to obtain the IMC-PID setting in closed-loop mode without acquiring detailed information of the process. The proposed method is based on the closed-loop step set point experiment using a proportional only controller with gain K. It is the direct approach to find the PID controller setting similar to classical Ziegler-Nichols closed-loop method. Based on simulations of a wide range of first-order with delay processes, a simple correlation has been derived to obtain the modified IMC-PID controller settings from closed-loop experiment. In this method, controller gain is a function of the overshoot obtained in the closed loop set point experiment. The integral and derivative time is mainly a function of the time to reach the first peak(overshoot). Simulation has been conducted for the broad class of processes and the controllers were tuned to have the same degree of robustness by measuring the maximum sensitivity, Ms, in order to obtain a reasonable comparison. The PID controller settings obtained in the proposed tuning method show better performance and robustness with other two-step tuning methods for the broad class of processes. It has also been applied to temperature control loop in distillation column model. The result has been compared to the open loop tuning method where it gives robust and fast response.