Comparative Real-Time Study of Three Enhanced Control Strategies Applied to Dynamic Process Systems

In this study, a comparative analysis of three different control methods for precise, real-time control of a complex dynamic double-tank liquid level process system was performed. Since the system in question has a time-delayed structure, feedforward proportional integral (FF-PI) control and cascaded nonlinear feedforward proportional integral delayed (CNPIR) controllers were tested on the process system. While the FF-PI controller improved the response time of the system, it showed limitations in handling external disturbances and nonlinearities. On the other hand, the CNPIR controller showed better improvements in control accuracy and lower overshoot compared to the FF-PI controller. Since the process system has a nonlinear model and is affected by external disturbances, these two controllers were inadequate in this study when compared to the fractional order adaptive proportional integral derivative sliding mode controller (FO-APIDSMC). The FO-APIDSMC controller provided fairly good performance in both tracking accuracy and disturbance rejection control for non-chattering, fast finite-time convergence, increased robustness, and uncertain dynamic processes. Experimental results reveal that the FO-APIDSMC controller achieves superior minimized tracking error and outperforms the FF-PI and CNPIR controllers by effectively handling uncertainties and external disturbances.