A Modified 2-DOF Control Framework and GA Based Intelligent Tuning of PID Controllers

Although a controller is well-tuned for set-point tracking, it shows poor control results for load disturbance rejection and vice versa. In this paper, a modified two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) control framework to solve this problem is proposed, and an optimal tuning method for the pa-rameters of each proportional integral derivative (PID) controller is discussed. The unique feature of the proposed scheme is that a feedforward controller is embedded in the parallel control structure to improve set-point tracking performance. This feedforward controller and the standard PID con-troller are combined to create a new set-point weighted PID controller with a set-point weighting function. Therefore, in this study, two controllers are used: a set-point weighted PID controller for set-point tracking and a conventional PID controller for load disturbance rejection. The parameters included in the two controllers are tuned separately to improve set-point tracking and load dis-turbance rejection performances, respectively. Each controller is optimally tuned by genetic algo-rithm (GA) in terms of minimizing the IAE performance index, and what is special at this time is that it also tunes the set-point weighting parameter simultaneously. The simulation results performed on four virtual processes verify that the proposed method shows better performance in set-point tracking and load disturbance rejection than those of the other methods.