Fractional Order PI Controllers for Real-time Control of Pressure Plant

Real-time pressure process control is quite challenging due to high nonlinearity and sensitivity. For the control of such processes, PI/PID controllers are most widely used due to the advantages of simple structure, ease of tuning and implementation. However, the performance of such controllers degrades during set-point change and high external disturbances. Therefore, this paper proposes the application of fractional order PI (FOPI) controllers for real-time control of pressure process. Experimental results of the performance comparison of the three major variants of FOPI controllers (i.e., (PI)n, [PI] and PI) shows that the standard form PI outperformed the other controllers in terms of overshoot while (PI)n produced better results in terms of settling and rise times. Hence, the later has better disturbance ability to recover from effect of disturbance.