ON/OFF, PROPORTIONAL,

INTEGRAL, DIFFERENTIAL
MODE OF CONTROLS
PRESENTED BY: CDT. AMORA & CDT. ANONUEVO
INSTRUCTOR: ENGR. KEAN G. ESTIALBO
TOPICS FOR TODAY:

• ON/OFF MODE OF CONTROL

• PROPORTIONAL, INTEGRAL, AND
DIFFERENTIAL MODE OF CONTROL
ON/OFF CONTROL SYSTEM

• In an industrial plant, a closed-loop control system has the role of

keeping a measured physical signal to a predefined value
(setpoint). The physical signal, also called controlled variable,
can be of any kind, electrical (voltage, current, power),
mechanical (position, speed, force, torque), hydraulic (pressure,
flow) or thermal (temperature). The difference between the
controlled variable (measured) and the predefined value is
called error.
• The input of the controller is the error and the controller output is an
actuation signal which is send to an actuator. The controlled variable is further
measured with a sensor and the information is feed back to the controller.
• The difference between the setpoint and the plant output (measured) occurs
because of the disturbances which affect the plant (process). The role of the
controller is to reject these disturbances and keep the plant output (controlled
variable) to the predefined value (setpoint).
• The ways in which the controller reacts to the error are called control laws or
control modes. In industrial applications there are several control laws used,
most of them being on-off control, PID control or other more advanced laws
(fuzzy, neuro-fuzzy, optimal, etc.).
ON/OFF MODE OF CONTROL
• The on-off control is the simplest form of a controller, which switches ON
when the error is positive and switches OFF when the error is zero or
negative. An on-off controller doesn’t have intermediate states but only fully
ON or fully OFF states. Due to the switching logic, an on-off controller is
often called a bang-bang controller or a two-step controller.
• Regardless of the size of the error, the output of the on-off controller can only
be fully ON or fully OFF, it is not proportional with the error.
• Let’s take as example the temperature control of an industrial oven. The
temperature inside the oven is measured with a sensor and feed back to the
controller. Based on the error (difference between setpoint temperature and
measured temperature), the heating elements are turned ON or OFF by the
controller. There are no intermediate values of the heating element, they are
fully ON or fully OFF.
• If we compare this system with the generic closed-loop system explained
above, we can identify the following elements:
• controller: switch
• plant: oven
• feedback (measured output): temperature
• The industrial oven has two important characteristics which need to be
explained, because they affect the response of the controller:
• dead time
• capacitance (inertia)
• In most of the control systems with feedback loop, the system can
not respond instantly to any disturbance and it takes time (delay)
until the controller output has any effect on the measured (plant)
output. This time delay is know as dead time. In the case of the
industrial oven, if the access door is opened, it takes time until the
temperature drops, the controller senses the difference, turns the
heaters on and the temperature is brought back to setpoint. Dead
time has the effect of hiding the disturbance from the controller and
limits its ability to react quickly.
• The capacitance of a system is seen as the resistance to changing
inputs. The higher the capacitance of a system, the longer the time it
takes to react to changes. With the oven cold, even if turning the
heaters on, takes time for the temperature to start increasing and
reach the nominal value. The advantage is that capacitance has the
tendency to filter (dampen) out the effect of disturbances on a
system.
ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGE

• The main advantages of on-off controllers are: simplicity,

inexpensive and digital output (only two states). The main
disadvantages are: the controlled parameter will continuously
switch around the setpoint and if the hysteresis is not correctly set,
the deviation from the setpoint could be quite significant.
 PROPORTIONAL, INTEGRAL, AND
DIFFERENTIAL MODE OF CONTROL
• Popular Terminology for PID Control
Often PID controllers involve terminology that is unique within controls.
The three gains, proportional, integral and differential, are called modes and PID
is referred to as three-mode control. Error is sometimes called offset.
The integral gain is called reset and the differential gain is often called rate. The
condition where the error is large enough to saturate the loop and continue
ramping up the integral is called reset windup. Synchronization, the process of
controlling the integral during saturation, is called antireset wind-up.
• The controller incorporates both control laws and power conversion. Control laws,
such as proportional-integral-differential (PID) control, are familiar to control
engineers. The process of tuning — setting gains to attain desired performance —
amounts to adjusting the parameters of the control laws. Most controllers let
designers adjust gains; the most flexible controllers allow the designer to modify
the control laws themselves. When tuning, most control engineers focus on
attaining a quick, stable command response. However, in some applications,
rejecting disturbances is more important than responding to commands. All control
systems should demonstrate robust performance because even nearly identical
machines and processes vary somewhat from one to the other, and they change
over time. Robust operation means control laws must be designed with enough
margin to accommodate reasonable changes in the plant and power converter.
• Virtually all controllers have power converters. The control laws
produce information, but power must be applied to control the
plant. The power converter can be driven by any available power
source, including electric, pneumatic, hydraulic, or chemical
power.
• That’s all guys! Thank you!