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ISA Transactions 37 (1998) 227±235

A fuzzy logic based PI autotuner

R. Bandyopadhyay *, D. Patranabis
Department of Instrumentation Engineering, Jadavpur University, Salt Lake Campus, Calcutta 700091, India

Abstract
An autotuner based on PI algorithm starting with deadbeat approach and prediction made with fuzzy inference
mechanism has been presented. While fuzzy inferencing in PI mode has been of some consequence in recent years,
addition of the deadbeat format is expected to improve the performance minimizing IAE through reduction of the
number of command variation. Because of the requirement of controller gain and reset time beyond the acceptance
limits with a deadbeat format, constraints following a knowledge base and compatible with the system using fuzzy
inference engine have been imposed. The simulated as well as practical results with table top process models have
shown substantial improvement in the performance of the system as compared with the Ziegler±Nichol's approach.
# 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Auto-tuning; PI Controller; Fuzzy logic

1. Introduction Besides, the process non-linearity and unpredictive

Autotuning controllers started appearing on the
industrial scene speci®cally in process control areas
mainly because of their capability of on-line tun-
ing of the controller parameters. The process
parameters, in general, are dynamic in nature and
the control of such a process requires the con-
troller parameters to be tuned continuously or at
least at regular intervals. Several autotuning algo-
rithms are now available to serve the above pur-
pose. Some of these algorithms were based on
minimum variance optimal control policy [1]. A
subsequent approach was to minimize a perfor-
mance index involving input, output and states [2].
Such algorithms are, however, based on the
mathematical models of the processes which,
often, are made with insucient process data.
* Corresponding author. e-mail: ieeju@giascl0l.vsnl.net.in
variability make such an approach quite di€erent
from the real practical situation. An algorithm
named EXACT [3] is now being commercially
used. It is based on pattern recognition and expert
system techniques.
Subsequent to the development of conventional
autotuning and adaptive controllers, another class
of controllers appeared in the scenario and made
their presence strongly felt. These controllers use
fuzzy inference mechanism [4] and have been
shown to outperform conventional controllers for
certain speci®c applications where the process is
a€ected by noise, load disturbance and other
ambient conditions that cause parameter variation
and sudden structural change. These controllers
rely mainly on the knowledge of process experts
and are basically non-linear in nature, i.e. the
controller parameters are di€erent for di€erent
process conditions [5,6].

0968-0896/98/$19.00 # 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

PII: S0019 -0 578(98)00020 -2
228 R. Bandyopadhyay, D. Patranabis/ISA Transactions 37 (1998) 227±235
More recently, He et al. [7] have utilized the
fuzzy logic theory to tune conventional PID con-
trollers. In this approach, the control mechanism
is the conventional PID unlike fuzzy logic con-
trollers, but the controller parameters are tuned to
achieve better response employing the knowledge
of process experts. The rationale behind such an
approach is that since the controller output is not
derived directly from the inference engine, the
method is less sensitive to the limitation of the
process expert. Subsequently, Xu et al. [8] have
developed a tuning rule for fuzzy PI controllers
based on phase/gain margin. Their approach is
similar to the work of He et al in the sense that
both of them have used the conventional PI or
PID form to generate the controller output.
A novel algorithm for automatic tuning of a PI
controller is presented in this paper. It combines
the underlying philosophy of dead-beat control
with fuzzy control for developing this autotuning
algorithm. The algorithm follows the techniques
of He et al. [7] as also Xu et al. [8] for tuning a
conventional PI controller with fuzzy inference
mechanism. In addition, however, the proposed
algorithm tries to make the deviation from the set-
point zero within one sampling period according
to the format of dead-beat control. Although it is
virtually impossible to reach the desired zero error
state in one sampling period, taking advantage of
this technique, the algorithm tunes the controller
parameters fast enough to achieve this goal. The
combination mentioned above is expected to work
towards the two speci®c aspects (i) maintaining
the set-point and (ii) reduce the number of `com-
mand variations' [9].
When the process is in the initial steady-state
condition, the controller parameters are set at
their initial values which are obtained from Zieg-
ler±Nichols [10], Cohen±Coon [11] or re®ned
Fig. 1. System block diagram.
Ziegler±Nichols [12] tuning formulae. As soon as
there is a disturbance, the proposed control algo-
rithm is initiated, the controller parameters are
tuned at each sampling instant. They are, how-
ever, restored to their initial settings whenever the
error becomes negligibly small. In fact, the con-
troller parameters, namely the proportional con-
stant (Kc ) and reset time (TR ), due to such a
tuning process, move around their initial settings
only. The proposed tuner algorithm has been tes-
ted on ®rst-order plus dead time and second-order
plus dead-time process models and in each case
the result is shown to be better on count of IAE
criterion. The comparison is done with the con-
ventional PI controller tuned by Ziegler±Nichols
method. Finally, the comparison on a laboratory
type temperature rig PT-326 has been executed to
prove the ecacy of the proposed tuner.
2. The method
The block diagram of the process and the con-
troller is shown in Fig. 1. The PI Controller is
represented in its discrete form as
Kc T X
nÿ1
mn ˆ Kc en ‡ ei …1†
2TR iˆ0
The controller parameters, Kc and TR are tuned
during the transient state depending upon the
values of e and e._ The objective of the proposed
method is to reach the ideal situation of zero error
at the next sampling instant.
The PI algorithm in the velocity form is given as
T
mn‡1 ÿ mn ˆ Kcn en‡1 ÿ KCnÿ1 en ‡ K c en …2†
2TRn n
 R. Bandyopadhyay, D. Patranabis/ISA Transactions 37 (1998) 227±235
where,
mn‡1 ; mn ˆ controller output at (n ‡ 1)th and
nth instant,
en‡1 ; en ˆ error at (n ‡ 1)th and nth instant,
Kcn ; Kcnÿ1 ˆ proportional gain at (n ‡ 1)th and
nth instant,
TRn= reset time at (n ‡ 1)th instant,
and T= sampling time.
For the error to reach zero at the next instant,
the dead-beat control format is enforced in Eq. (2)
so that making en‡1 ˆ 0, the new ratio of Kc and
TR is obtained as
Kcn 2 domain [ÿ1,+1]. The fuzzi®er block fuzzi®es the
ˆ …mn‡1 ÿ mn ‡ Kcnÿ1
en † …
TRn T
en
The RHS of Eq. (3) is to be evaluated for obtain-
ing the new ratio of Kcn =TRn . All the quantities
excepting mn‡1 , are known. For evaluation of
mn‡1 , a rule-based prediction mechanism is pro-
posed which would be supported by knowledge-
base of the experts. The prediction, obtained using
a fuzzy rule-base de®ned on e and e,_ has been seen
to be well adapted to the proposed dead-beat PI
algorithm. The prediction mechanism is explained
in the following section.
2.1. The fuzzy prediction mechanism for mn+1
The prediction model chosen here for the con-
troller output employs linear extrapolation and is
given by the following equation.
mn‡1 ˆ mn ‡ …mn ÿ mnÿ1 † …
The value of  is to be chosen in such a way that
the predicted controller output, mn‡1 , always leads
Fig. 2. Fuzzy interferencing mechanism for the value of .
229
the system to the desired state via an optimal tra-
jectory. In order to achieve this,  is selected
depending upon the process state (i.e. the values of
e and e)_ using an inference engine and rulebase
where the rules are derived from knowledge of the
process experts. The predicted value of controller
output during the transition of the process from
one state to another is desired to be smooth. For
this, the fuzzy inferencing technique has been
adopted because of the smoothness it provides due
to its inherent interpolative nature. The inference
mechanism for  is shown in Fig. 2.
Here a normalization factor is chosen in such a
way that e and e_ cover the entire normalized
3†
two input variables e and e_ into two fuzzy vari-
ables A and B respectively. The term set for both
the variables are taken as {NB, NM, NS, ZE, PS,
PM, PB} and their membership functions are
shown in Fig. 3.
The inference mechanism for  follows the
Takagi±Sugeno model [13], i.e. rules with fuzzy
antecedent and crisp consequent. The rules shown
in Fig. 4 are of the form:
Ri : ife is Ai and e_ is Bi ; then  is ci …5†
The consequent is a crisp variable c and is chosen
in such a way that denormalization is not
required. For evaluating the value of , the fol-
lowing steps are adopted.
Step 1: For given input values of the process
variables e and e, _ their degrees of
_ are cal-
membership i …e† and i …e†,
4† culated from the membership func-
tions depicted in Fig. 3.
Step 2: The minimum of these degrees of
membership is taken and denoted as
230 R. Bandyopadhyay, D. Patranabis/ISA Transactions 37 (1998) 227±235

ui . Thus for each rule, a tuple (ui , 2.2. New values of Kc and TR
ci ) is formed.
Step 3: The value of  is the combined output After obtaining the value of mn‡1 , the RHS of
of all the rules and is the weighted Eq. (3) is evaluated. Since there is only one equation
normalized sum of all the pairs. (Eq. (3)) for the two variables Kcn and TRn , they
P are evaluated using the method outlined below:
ui ci
i 1. Since Eq. (3) speci®es the desired ratio of Kcn
ˆ P …6†
ui and TRn , both of them are changed by the
i
same factor from their initial settings Kcss
and TRss . This is explained with an example.
Using the above value of , mn‡1 is predicted. Suppose for a particular process, the steady-

_
Fig. 3. Membership functions of e and e.

Fig. 4. Rules for the value of .

 R. Bandyopadhyay, D. Patranabis/ISA Transactions 37 (1998) 227±235
state controller parameters Kcss and TRss are
1.5 and 0.5 s respectively with the ratio (Kcss /
TRss ) being 3. If the desired ratio according
p to
Eq. (3) is 4, then Kcss is multiplied by (4/3)
p 
and TRss is divided by (4/3) so that their
respective e€ect is same. This is given in
expressions (7) and (8) below.
s
TR
Kc ˆ  ss
Kcss …7†
Kcss
and
s
TR
TR ˆ TRss =  ss …
Kcss
where  is the desired ratio of Kc and TR as
obtained from Eq. (3).
2. The above two expressions (7) and (8) if
implemented without any modi®cation or
constraint result in large oscillations even
with a monotonic process. This is because in
order to make the error zero at the next
sampling instant, the controller output is to
be extremely large and hence the value of Kc
would be very high and TR very low tending
to make the system unstable. In order to
avoid this problem, (a) a constraint on the
values of Kc and TR is imposed and (b)  is
divided by a factor ', with the provision that
it be automatically set by the algorithm. The
allowable range of Kc and TR is kept at
‹50% of their steady-state values which is
quite a reasonable assumption and which
provides smooth and bounded variation of
the PI parameters. If the allowable range is
kept large, oscillations creep in, and too
small a range does not show signi®cant
improvement on the performance of the
controller. If only this constraint on the
allowable range of Kc and TR is imposed, the
algorithm does not give satisfactory results
since the controller parameters are always at
their extreme values. What is sought from
this controller is a smooth variation of the
controller parameters and this is obtained by
dividing  by a factor '. Initially when the
algorithm starts, the value of ' is kept at 1.
231
The value of ' is set by the algorithm in such
a way that
TRss
Kcss
is always less than or equal to …1 ‡ r†2 where
r is usually taken as 0.5 since the new value
of Kc and TR is always to be kept within
‹50% of their steady-state values and the
maximum value of ' is used for further cal-
culations. The method is summarized in the
following algorithm.
8†
Initialization
Step 1:  max …1 ‡ r†2
…Kcss =TRss †.
Step 2:  1:0.
Iteration
Step 1: Obtain mn‡1 using fuzzy inference
mechanism explained in Section 2. 1.
Step 2: Obtain  from Eq. (3).
Step 3: If  > max then max ; ' =max .
Step 4: new ='.
Step 5: Obtain Kc and TR from new using
expressions (7) and (8) and generate controller
output.
Step 6: Go to step 1.
3. Simulation results
(a) First order plus dead time (FOPDT) model:
eÿ:s
:s ‡ 1
Simulation runs have been carried out with the
above model and the response with the proposed
controller is compared with that obtained using
the Ziegler±Nichols tuning method. The results for
 ˆ 0:2 s. and  ˆ 1 s. are shown in Fig. 5 where
the sampling time is assumed to be 0.05 s. The
disturbance to the process is assumed to be a unit
step at the set-point applied at t ˆ 0 and a step of
magnitude 0.5 to the load applied at t ˆ 5 s.
Comparison of the responses indicated by the
curves in Fig. 5 shows that both with set-point
change and load change, the proposed autotuner
232 R. Bandyopadhyay, D. Patranabis/ISA Transactions 37 (1998) 227±235
Fig. 5. Simulation results for the FOPDT model: (i) - - - - -Ziegler±Nichols tuning, (ii)б proposed autotuner.
performs better than the Ziegler±Nichols tuner in
so far as the IAE values are concerned. It is,
however, clear that with set-point change, there is
a reduction in rise-time as well as peak deviation
tending to reasonably better performance. With
load change, however, peak deviation decreases,
but no substantial change in rise-time is observed
and the improvement, therefore, is less. It may be
stressed that reductions in rise-time and peak
deviation/overshoot are the primary requisites for
improved performance. Obviously, actual reduc-
tion in IAE would also depend on the values of ,
 and T as well.
(b) Second order plus dead time (SOPDT)
model:
eÿ:s
s:…s ‡ 1†
A second order oscillatory process model with
considerable dead-time has been taken for simu-
lation study. In this case, also, the proposed algo-
rithm performs better than the conventional PI
controller tuned with the Ziegler±Nichols for-
mulae. The results are shown in Fig. 6, where the
dead-time has been taken as 0.3 s, the sampling
time as 0.05 s, and the disturbance is a unit step at
the set-point. There is considerable reduction in
the peak deviation as also other peaks of the
response curve obtained using the proposed auto-
tuner as compared with the response curve
obtained through Ziegler±Nichols tuner and,
although there is no substantial improvement in
the rise-time, the IAE is reduced considerably with
the proposed autotuner. The process itself being
oscillatory, the alignment time is more in both the
cases, but, along the time scale, the response curve
of the proposed tuner seems to demonstrate a
progressive improvement in the error ®gure. Here,
also, the actual IAE would depend on the choice
of process and sampling parameters.
4. Experimental results
The proposed algorithm was tested in a labora-
tory type thermal process (Feedback PT326) for
controlling its temperature. Fig. 7 shows the
 R. Bandyopadhyay, D. Patranabis/ISA Transactions 37 (1998) 227±235 233

Fig. 6. Simulation results for the SOPDT model: (i) - - - - -Ziegler±Nichols tuning, (ii) б proposed autotuner.

Fig. 7. Experimental results with PT326 temperature controller kit: (i) - - - - Ziegler±Nichols tuning, (ii) б proposed autotuner.
234 R. Bandyopadhyay, D. Patranabis/ISA Transactions 37 (1998) 227±235
response of the process once with ®xed controller
parameters tuned by Ziegler±Nichols formulae
and also when Kc and TR are tuned with the pro-
posed algorithm. From the ultimate gain and per-
iod, the values of Kcss and TRss were found to be
1.1 and 0.5 s. respectively. The sampling time was
taken as 0.1 s. From the results it is seen that the
proposed algorithm improves the rise-time and
reduces the overshoot. Since both rise-time and
overshoot or peak deviation are reduced, there is
improvement in the IAE. The actual value of IAE
would, however, depend on the process as well as
on the sampling rate. Studies with di€erent set-
point change and sampling rate have been made,
in all the cases, the results show improvement.
Fig. 7 shows a speci®c result with a set-point
change from 30 to 38 C for the process chosen
and T ˆ 0:1 s. where the improvement in IAE is
9.5%.
5. Conclusion
A novel technique of automatic tuning of a PI
controller using fuzzy inference mechanism and
dead-beat approach is presented. The technique
does not require the knowledge of the process
parameters during the tuning stage. However, the
controller parameters need to be set at their initial
values which are functions of the process para-
meters and are obtained via process modeling. The
dead-beat approach allows control of the process
in a shorter time and hence with less number of
command variations. Besides, the prediction of the
controller output is made dependent on a single
parameter, , which is determined using fuzzy
inferencing technique as a crisp consequent with
the process states e and e_ as antecedent sources for
the rulebase which is dependent as usual on the
database generated from the expert knowledge.
Since a PI controller has been considered, the
prediction of the controller output is a function of
TR and Kc which at the instant next to the initi-
alization would tend to assume abnormally low
and/or high values because of the dead-beat
approach. Provision of their containment has been
made by taking help of an empirical approach.
Since a smooth variation of the response is desired
around the ®nal line of control, the algorithm has
been designed with appropriate provision for this.
Simulation results for SOPDT model (Fig. 6)
indicate that both the Ziegler±Nichols tuning and
the proposed autotuning require some time before
aligning with the set-point line, yet it is clear that
the proposed tuner response curve has con-
siderably less peak transverse excursion magnitude
compared to the Ziegler±Nichols tuner and hence
the IAE tends to be smaller.
The experimental plots of Fig. 7 show that the
ultimate alignment of the response curve of the
proposed autotuner is in variance with the set-
point line. This is true for the Ziegler±Nichols
tuner as well, This is mainly due to the environ-
mental turbulence of the medium of the prototype
process adopted for testing the algorithms. This
variance, however, is small in magnitude and ran-
dom in nature. Its mean value can, therefore, be
considered to be either zero or negligibly small.
However, the overall comparison between the two
curves clearly shows that the proposed autotuner
has improved performance characteristics, as dis-
cussed in Section 4.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their indebtedness
to Mr. R.K. Mudi of Instrumentation Engineering
Department, Jadavpur University for his active
support during the progress of this work.
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