An experimental evaluation of optimal control design for coupled tank system

Abstract

This paper presents a Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) controller for the real-time control of a coupled tank liquid level system. The model of the coupled tank system has been developed based on system identification technique that employs least square error algorithm (LS) for parameter estimation. The proposed controller algorithm has been applied on the identified model. The performance of the projected control algorithm has been compared with that of a Conventional PI controller. From both the simulation as well as the experimental results, it is observed that the performance of the proposed LQR control is more efficient then the widely used conventional PI Controller.