The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies. . . , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for widerand rapid dissemination. Benchmarking is a technique first applied by Rank Xerox in the late 1970s for business processes. As a subject in the commercial arena, benchmarking thrives with, for example, a European Benchmarking Forum. It has taken rather longer for benchmarking to make the transfer to the technical domain and even now the subject is making a slow headway. Akey research step in this direction was taken by Harris (1989) who used minimum variance control as a benchmark for controller loop assessment. This contribution opened up the area and a significant specialist literature has now developed. Significant support for the methodologywas given by Honeywell who have controller assessment routines in their process control applications software; therefore, it is timely to welcome a (first) monograph on controller performance assessment by Biao Huang and Sirish Shah to the Advances in Industrial Control series.

Control Performance Management in Industrial Automation provides a coherent and self-contained treatment of a group of methods and applications of burgeoning importance to the detection and solution of problems with control loops that are vital in maintaining product quality, operational safety, and efficiency of material and energy consumption in the process industries. The monograph deals with all aspects of control performance management (CPM), from controller assessment (minimum-variance-control-based and advanced methods), to detection and diagnosis of control loop problems (process non-linearities, oscillations, actuator faults), to the improvement of control performance (maintenance, re-design of loop components, automatic controller re-tuning). It provides a contribution towards the development and application of completely self-contained and automatic methodologies in the field. Moreover, within this work, many CPM tools have been developed that goes far beyond available CPM packages. Control Performance Management in Industrial Automation: · presents a comprehensive review of control performance assessment methods; · develops methods and procedures for the detection and diagnosis of the root-causes of poor performance in complex control loops; · covers important issues that arise when applying these assessment and diagnosis methods; · recommends new approaches and techniques for the optimization of control loop performance based on the results of the control performance stage; and · offers illustrative examples and industrial case studies drawn from – chemicals, building, mining, pulp and paper, mineral and metal processing industries. This book will be of interest to academic and industrial staff working on control systems design, maintenance or optimisation in all process industries.

This book is a practical guide to the application of control benchmarking to real, complex, industrial processes. The variety of industrial case studies gives the benchmarking ideas presented a robust real-world attitude. The book deals with control engineering principles and economic and management aspects of benchmarking. It shows the reader how to avoid common problems in benchmarking and details the benefits of effective benchmarking.

In the process industries, stiction is the most common performance-limiting valve problem and over the last decade numerous different techniques for overcoming it have been proposed. This book represents a comprehensive presentation of these methods, including their principles, assumptions, strengths and drawbacks. Guidelines and working procedures are provided for the implementation of each method and MATLAB®-based software can be downloaded from www.ualberta.ca/~bhuang/stiction-book enabling readers to apply the methods to their own data. Methods for the limitation of stiction effects are proposed within the general context of: oscillation detection in control loops, stiction detection, diagnosis and stiction quantification and diagnosis of multiple faults. The state-of-the-art algorithms presented in this book are demonstrated and compared in industrial case studies of diverse origin – chemicals, building, mining, pulp and paper, mineral and metal processing.

This book presents a comprehensive review of currently available Control Performance Assessment methods. It covers a broad range of classical and modern methods, with a main focus on assessment practice, and is intended to help practitioners learn and properly perform control assessment in the industrial reality. Further, it offers an educational guide for control engineers, who are currently in high demand in the industry. The book consists of three main parts. Firstly, a comprehensive review of available approaches is presented and discussed. The classical canon methods are extended with a discussion of nonlinear and complex alternative measures using non-Gaussian statistics, persistence and fractional calculations. Secondly, the methods’ applicability aspects are visualized with the aid of computer simulations, covering the most popular control philosophies used in the process industry. Lastly, a critical review of the methods discussed, on the basis of real-world industrial examples, rounds out the coverage.

In this in-depth book, the authors address the concepts and terminology that are needed to work in the field of process control. The material is presented in a straightforward manner that is independent of the control system manufacturer. It is assumed that the reader may not have worked in a process plant environment and may be unfamiliar with the field devices and control systems. Much of the material on the practical aspects of control design and process applications is based on the authors personal experience gained in working with process control systems. Thus, the book is written to act as a guide for engineers, managers, technicians, and others that are new to process control or experienced control engineers who are unfamiliar with multi-loop control techniques. After the traditional single-loop and multi-loop techniques that are most often used in industry are covered, a brief introduction to advanced control techniques is provided. Whether the reader of this book is working as a process control engineer, working in a control group or working in an instrument department, the information will set the solid foundation needed to understand and work with existing control systems or to design new control applications. At various points in the chapters on process characterization and control design, the reader has an opportunity to apply what was learned using web-based workshops. The only items required to access these workshops are a high-speed Internet connection and a web browser. Dynamic process simulations are built into the workshops to give the reader a realistic "hands-on" experience. Also, one chapter of the book is dedicated to techniques that may be used to create process simulations using tools that are commonly available within most distributed control systems. At various points in the chapters on process characterization and control design, the reader has an opportunity to apply what was learned using web-based workshops. The only items required to access these workshops are a high-speed Internet connection and a web browser. Dynamic process simulations are built into the workshops to give the reader a realistic "hands-on" experience. Also, one chapter of the book is dedicated to techniques that may be used to create process simulations using tools that are commonly available within most distributed control systems. As control techniques are introduced, simple process examples are used to illustrate how these techniques are applied in industry. The last chapter of the book, on process applications, contains several more complex examples from industry that illustrate how basic control techniques may be combined to meet a variety of application requirements. As control techniques are introduced, simple process examples are used to illustrate how these techniques are applied in industry. The last chapter of the book, on process applications, contains several more complex examples from industry that illustrate how basic control techniques may be combined to meet a variety of application requirements.

A typical design procedure for model predictive control or control performance monitoring consists of: 1. identification of a parametric or nonparametric model; 2. derivation of the output predictor from the model; 3. design of the control law or calculation of performance indices according to the predictor. Both design problems need an explicit model form and both require this three-step design procedure. Can this design procedure be simplified? Can an explicit model be avoided? With these questions in mind, the authors eliminate the first and second step of the above design procedure, a “data-driven” approach in the sense that no traditional parametric models are used; hence, the intermediate subspace matrices, which are obtained from the process data and otherwise identified as a first step in the subspace identification methods, are used directly for the designs. Without using an explicit model, the design procedure is simplified and the modelling error caused by parameterization is eliminated.

This book fills the gap between basic control configurations (Practical Process Control) and model predictive control (MPC). For those loops whose performance has a direct impact on plant economics or product quality, going beyond simple feedback or cascade can improve control performance, or specifically, reduce the variance about the target. However, the effort required to implement such control technology must be offset by increased economic returns from production operations. The economic aspects of the application of the various advanced control technologies are stressed throughout the book.

The Encyclopedia of Systems and Control collects a broad range of short expository articles that describe the current state of the art in the central topics of control and systems engineering as well as in many of the related fields in which control is an enabling technology. The editors have assembled the most comprehensive reference possible, and this has been greatly facilitated by the publisher’s commitment continuously to publish updates to the articles as they become available in the future. Although control engineering is now a mature discipline, it remains an area in which there is a great deal of research activity, and as new developments in both theory and applications become available, they will be included in the online version of the encyclopedia. A carefully chosen team of leading authorities in the field has written the well over 250 articles that comprise the work. The topics range from basic principles of feedback in servomechanisms to advanced topics such as the control of Boolean networks and evolutionary game theory. Because the content has been selected to reflect both foundational importance as well as subjects that are of current interest to the research and practitioner communities, a broad readership that includes students, application engineers, and research scientists will find material that is of interest.

The field of process control has evolved gradually over the years, with emphasis on key aspects including designing and tuning of controllers. This textbook covers fundamental concepts of basic and multivariable process control, and important monitoring and diagnosis techniques. It discusses topics including state-space models, Laplace transform to convert state-space models to transfer function models, linearity and linearization, inversion formulae, conversion of output to time domain, stability analysis through partial fraction expansion, and stability analysis using Routh table and Nyquits plots. The text also covers basics of relative gain array, multivariable controller design and model predictive control. The text comprehensively covers minimum variable controller (MVC) and minimum variance benchmark with the help of solved examples for better understanding. Fundamentals of diagnosis of control loop problems are also explained and explanations are bolstered through solved examples. Pedagogical features including solved problems and unsolved exercises are interspersed throughout the text for better understanding. The textbook is primarily written for senior undergraduate and graduate students in the field of chemical engineering and biochemical engineering for a course on process control. The textbook will be accompanied by teaching resource such a collection of slides for the course material and a includsolution manual for the instructors.