Generalized framework for decoupler design

Abstract

With the benefits of suppressing the interaction effects in a multivariable system, the decoupling control brings in several other challenges and difficulties. For TITO processes, the decoupling control remains simple and has been demonstrated in the earlier works. But as the dimensionality of the system increases, the complexities in the decoupling control blows up differently for various decoupling schemes. Therefore, the TITO decoupling framework cannot be simply extended to higher dimensional processes for all decoupling control design methodologies. In this paper, we present a generalized framework for decoupler design for an «-dimensional multivariable system. This work also highlights the challenges and difficulties involved in the decoupler design for higher dimensional systems. Simulations have been carried out to verify how well the decoupling schemes work in suppressing the interaction effects. Further, robustness of the decoupling schemes against plant-model mismatch has been tested by evaluating various performance indices.