IMC Based Fractional Order Controller for Three Interacting Tank Process

In model based control, performance of the controlled plant considerably depends on the accuracy of real plant being modelled. In present work, an attempt has been made to design Internal Model Control (IMC), for three interacting tank process for liquid level control. To avoid complexities in controller design, the third order three interacting tank process is modelled to First Order Plus Dead Time (FOPDT) model. Exploiting the admirable features of Fractional Calculus, the higher order model is also modelled to Fractional Order First Order Plus Dead Time (FO-FOPDT) model, which further reduces the modelling error. Moving to control section, different IMC schemes have been proposed, where the fractional order filter is introduced along with the conventional integer order filter. Various simulations have been performed to show the greatness of Fractional order modelled system & fractional order filters over conventional integer order modelled system & integer order filters respectively. Both for parameters estimation of reduced order model and filter tuning, Genetic Algorithm (GA) is being applied.