Bialystok University

of Technology
Faculty of Electrical Engineering

Laboratory Classes Report

Fundamentals of control engineering
FEE-10008

Exercise number: 5

Subject: Tuning of PID controller with the use of

Ziegler-Nichols method
Authors:
Oihan Perez de Arriluzea Iriarte Laboratory group: 2

Nuria Solares Raya

Miguel Quevedo Pérez

Teacher: PhD Łukasz Sajewski

Date: 05/12/2022

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Index
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................ 3
DESCRIPTION OF EXERCISE REALIZATION .................................................................................................... 4
RESULTS ........................................................................................................................................................ 5
Open-loop method ................................................................................................................................... 5
Close-loop method ................................................................................................................................... 7
CONCLUSIONS .............................................................................................................................................. 9

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INTRODUCTION
The goal of the exercise is to use the Ziegler-Nichols method for PID tuning and build a closed-
loop control system and measure the step response of the system.

To tune our PID, we will use two different methods: open-loop method and closed-loop method. After
checking the results, we’ll see which method was better.

A closed loop control system is system that automatically regulates itself to has a desired value without
human interaction. Closed loop systems differ from the open loop systems, which require manual
interaction. Open loop systems, also known as non-feedback systems, is a control system where the
output has no influence on the input. So, in an open loop the output is never measured.

We will use the same device from exercise 3 and 4, the SIPART DR22 (Fig. 1), the MAO (Fig. 2) and the
Data Acquisition Board (Fig. 3).

Fig. 2, MAO
Fig. 1, SIPART DR22

Fig. 3, Data Acquisition Board 3

DESCRIPTION OF EXERCISE REALIZATION

Before getting started, we’ll need to connect our SIPARD DR22 with the Mao and the Data
Acquisition Board (Fig. 4):

Fig. 4

We will work in two different cases, open-loop control system (without 20 and 19 pins in SIPART) and
close-loop control system.

• Open-loop case: We will set cp to 1, measure and use the results tune the PID parameters. Out
input will be 5(V). The step response it’s what we’ll measure and with that calculate the PID
parameters according to the Ziegler-Nichols method for open loop case (Fig. 5).
• Close-loop case: For this case we will be looking for the value of cp that makes the system
oscillate. We have to find a value of cp that is adequate. If cp is too low the oscillation will
disappear with time and if it’s to high the amplitude of the oscillations will be very big. Once we
have our cp value, we will get our PID parameters using the Ziegler-Nichols method for open
loop case (Fig. 6).

Fig. 5 Fig. 6 4
RESULTS
Open-loop method

The first test we’ll see it’s the open-loop system (Fig. 7):

𝐻(∞)

Fig. 7
L T

Where we need these two formulas to calculate the parameters:

L T H R a
1.1 3.2 4.761 1.488 0.61

Now with those calculations we can finally calculate or PID parameters:

P Kp = a = 0.61
PI Kp = 0.9a = 0.549 Ti = 3.3L = 3.63
PID Kp = 1.2a = 0.732 Ti = 2L = 2.2 Td = 0.5L = 0.55

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We can see in this plot (Fig. 8) the 3 cases:

Fig. 8

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Close-loop method

We will see now the close-loop method, we’ll do the same as before but with a few differences.

First, we will define our Kg, that is going to be the same as cp. Next we will look for the cp value that we
mention in the exercise description and measure some data that we’ll use to calculate the PID
parameters.

Tg

Fig. 9
This graphic (Fig. 9) is a representation of what we got in class, due to some trouble with the saving we
cannot see the original one but is close to this one.

In which our cp is equal to 2.359 and our Tg is 5.2 s. with these values we can calculate our PID
parameters according to these formulas:

P Kp = 0.5Kg = 1.18
PI Kp = 0.45Kg = 1.06 Ti = 0.85Tg = 4.92
PID Kp = 0.6Kg = 1.42 Ti = 0.5Tg = 2.6 Td = 0.125Tg = 0.65 ≈ 1

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8
CONCLUSIONS

We’ve seen the Ziegler-Nichols method for an open-loop and a closed-loop systems. We have
followed two different approaches to get the parameters and test them.

If we look at the open-loop plot we can see that the settling time is way to long. We have no
overshoot in open-loop system and almost no oscillations because we don’t have feedback, those are
the main differences with the closed-loop system. Where we can find a bit of overshoot and some
oscillations that disappear within a short time. This is caused because we are using a feedback.

To sum up, we can say that we get the best results with the closed-loop method and also in the
configuration of the PID model settings. The P configuration never reaches the setpoint an the PI has a
longer settling time than the PID configuration.