Innovations in advanced regulatory control methods for modern distributed control systems

Abstract

Many modern Distributed Control Systems (DCS) in industry are new replacements of previous versions of the same DCS vendor’s product line. During such upgrades the process is often automated using software to translate existing controller configurations as well as custom software to comply with the new system’s requirements and syntax. Doing this makes the upgrade process much faster and reduces the risk of introducing errors. It does, however, rob the control practitioner from making use of new features and capabilities of the new system. Therefore, there are many DCS in industry where only a small fraction of their newer capabilities are used. Many improvements in advanced regulatory control (ARC) that would improve control performance are available, but are never used. In order to show how modern DCS can enable more complex control solutions, four ARC level controllers and two stiction compensation algorithms, all more complex than current solutions typically found in industry, are introduced as examples of how increased complexity may provide increased control performance.