A survey of recent advances in fractional order control for time delay systems

Several papers reviewing fractional order calculus in control applications have been published recently. These papers focus on general tuning procedures, especially for the fractional order proportional integral derivative controller. However, not all these tuning procedures are applicable to all kinds of processes, such as the delicate time delay systems. This motivates the need for synthesizing fractional order control applications, problems, and advances completely dedicated to time delay processes. The purpose of this paper is to provide a state of the art that can be easily used as a basis to familiarize oneself with fractional order tuning strategies targeted for time delayed processes. Solely, the most recent advances, dating from the last decade, are included in this review

On the Selection of Tuning Methodology of FOPID Controllers for the Control of Higher Order Processes

In this paper, a comparative study is done on the time and frequency domain tuning strategies for fractional order (FO) PID controllers to handle higher order processes. A new fractional order template for reduced parameter modeling of stable minimum/non-minimum phase higher order processes is introduced and its advantage in frequency domain tuning of FOPID controllers is also presented. The time domain optimal tuning of FOPID controllers have also been carried out to handle these higher order processes by performing optimization with various integral performance indices. The paper highlights on the practical control system implementation issues like flexibility of online autotuning, reduced control signal and actuator size, capability of measurement noise filtration, load disturbance suppression, robustness against parameter uncertainties etc. in light of the above tuning methodologies.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figure

Incorporation of fractional-order dynamics into an existing PI/PID DC motor control loop

The problem of changing the dynamics of an existing DC motor control system without the need of making internal changes is considered in the paper. In particular, this paper presents a method for incorporating fractional-order dynamics in an existing DC motor control system with internal PI or PID controller, through the addition of an external controller into the system and by tapping its original input and output signals. Experimental results based on the control of a real test plant from MATLAB/Simulink environment are presented, indicating the validity of the proposed approach.This work was partially supported by the following grants under the Slovak Grant Agency, the Slovak Research and Development Agency: VEGA 1/0552/14, VEGA 1/0729/12, VEGA 1/0497/11, VEGA 1/2578/12, and APVV-0482-11, and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund, and the Estonian Doctoral School in Information and Communication Technology through the interdisciplinary project FOMCON

Handling packet dropouts and random delays for unstable delayed processes in NCS by optimal tuning of PIλDμ controllers with evolutionary algorithms

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.The issues of stochastically varying network delays and packet dropouts in Networked Control System (NCS) applications have been simultaneously addressed by time domain optimal tuning of fractional order (FO) PID controllers. Different variants of evolutionary algorithms are used for the tuning process and their performances are compared. Also the effectiveness of the fractional order PI(λ)D(μ) controllers over their integer order counterparts is looked into. Two standard test bench plants with time delay and unstable poles which are encountered in process control applications are tuned with the proposed method to establish the validity of the tuning methodology. The proposed tuning methodology is independent of the specific choice of plant and is also applicable for less complicated systems. Thus it is useful in a wide variety of scenarios. The paper also shows the superiority of FOPID controllers over their conventional PID counterparts for NCS applications.This work has been supported by the Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (BRNS) of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), India, sanction no. 2009/36/62-BRNS, dated November 2009

One-shot data-driven design of fractional-order PID controller considering closed-loop stability: fictitious reference signal approach

A one-shot data-driven tuning method for a fractional-order proportional-integral-derivative (FOPID) controller is proposed. The proposed method tunes the FOPID controller in the model-reference control formulation. A loss function is defined to evaluate the match between a given reference model and the closed-loop response while explicitly considering the closed-loop stability. A loss function value is based on the fictitious reference signal computed using the input/output data. Model matching is achieved via loss function minimization. The proposed method is simple and practical: it needs only one-shot input/output data of a plant (no plant model required), considers the bounded-input bounded-output stability of the closed-loop system, and automatically determines the appropriate parameter value via optimization. Numerical simulations show that the proposed approach facilitates good control performance, and destabilization can be avoided even if perfect model matching is unachievable

Fractional internal -model - control filter - based controller tuning for series cascade unstable plants

The disturbances and plant uncertainties are common in the process industry. In such conditions, the controller must manage robustness from the predefined plant models and be suitable for industrial applications. This paper uses a fractional-order theory in a controller design for a series cascade unstable plant. The methodology is developed using well-known terms for the industry, namely internal-model-control (IMC) and maximum sensitivity. The primary loop is designed with a fractionalorder filter–PID controller. The inner loop is built with IMC-PI controller with desired robustness value. In-depth comparisons reveal that the proposed scheme performs better regarding plant uncertainties and load disturbances

Fractional - order tilt integral derivative controller design using IMC scheme for unstable time - delay processes

The paper proposes a modified IMC-based Smith predictor (SP) control method for unstable time-delay processes. A novel design method to tune the parameters of a fractional-order tilt integral derivative controller has been developed using fractional-order IMC filter and process model parameters. The tuning parameters of the fractional-order filter are calculated from the new robustness index and desired performance constraint. The expected performance constraint satisfies good setpoint tracking and optimal control signal. The significant feature of the presented method is that the fractional IMC-SP structure provides a better outcome without adding much computational complexity. For a given robustness index, the optimal controller, which minimizes the performance constraint, the combination of control effort and integral time squared error, helps calculate the two tuning parameters. The benefit does verify under parameters’ uncertainties, external load disturbances and noise. The comparative study with various numerical examples from recently reported methods shows better overall servo and regulatory performances

A comprehensive review of modified Internal Model Control (IMC) structures and their filters for unstable processes

This paper reviews the evolution of Internal Model Control (IMC) techniques developed so far for unstable processes. The IMC strategy has shown significant results over the past two decades, including recent inclusions of fractional-order approaches. After a comprehensive study of various methods, the critical tuning methods and structural changes are clearly accumulated with their significance and limitation concerning controlling unstable time-delay systems. The comparisons with main structural changes and filter designs are also included in the numerical study and in discussion. Finally, the key research gaps and future motivations are indicated in the IMC approaches, considering available methods in the literature

Applications of Mathematical Models in Engineering

The most influential research topic in the twenty-first century seems to be mathematics, as it generates innovation in a wide range of research fields. It supports all engineering fields, but also areas such as medicine, healthcare, business, etc. Therefore, the intention of this Special Issue is to deal with mathematical works related to engineering and multidisciplinary problems. Modern developments in theoretical and applied science have widely depended our knowledge of the derivatives and integrals of the fractional order appearing in engineering practices. Therefore, one goal of this Special Issue is to focus on recent achievements and future challenges in the theory and applications of fractional calculus in engineering sciences. The special issue included some original research articles that address significant issues and contribute towards the development of new concepts, methodologies, applications, trends and knowledge in mathematics. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following: Fractional mathematical models; Computational methods for the fractional PDEs in engineering; New mathematical approaches, innovations and challenges in biotechnologies and biomedicine; Applied mathematics; Engineering research based on advanced mathematical tools