Control of a grinding mill circuit using fractional order controllers

Abstract

This paper presents the design and application of fractional single-input-single-output (SISO) controllers to a grinding mill circuit, which is a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) process. Two kinds of controllers are presented: fractional order proportional-integral (FOPI) controllers, and a combination of FOPI and fractional order model reference adaptive controllers (FOMRAC). The parameters of the controller are tuned using o -line particle swarm optimization. In the presence of disturbances and process noise, the SISO fractional controllers achieve similar or better performance compared to Linear Model Predictive Control (LMPC).