PID, PREDICTIVE AND FUZZY TEMPERATURE CONTROL FOR NUCLEAR-MAGNETIC-RESONANCE SPECTROSCOPY EXPERIMENTS

Temperature control inside the probe of an NMR spectrometer is dealt with. First a simple model of the system is derived by means of step response experiments. Then four control algorithms are implemented and compared. Specifically, a PID regulator is first synthesized and applied to the real plant. Then, in order to cope with the non-linearity of the plant, two adaptive predictive control algorithms are implemented, namely the generalized predictive control and the constrained receding horizon predictive control algorithms. They both show superior performance with respect to PID for control of a simulated plant model and of the real plant. Finally a feasibility study is carried out for a fuzzy controller; its unsatisfactory behaviour in simulation prevents one from applying it to the plant.