A comparative study of recent/popular PID tuning rules for stable, first-order plus dead time, single-input single-output processes

Numerous PID tuning rules exist, and new rules continue to be proposed in the literature. The primary objective of this article is to evaluate comprehensively and compare several recent or popular PID tuning methods based on the integral of absolute error in the controlled variable, total variation of the manipulated variable and maximum sensitivity. Several tuning rules such as internal model control, direct synthesis, and optimization-based methods were considered and evaluated for a range of first-order plus dead time process dynamics subjected to set-point changes and/or load disturbances via simulation. On the basis of the results, recommendations were then provided for selecting the optimal tuning rule for industrial processes according to the desired control objective (servo versus regulatory) and the process dead time to time constant ratio.