Design of a model reference adaptive PID control algorithm for a tank system

Abstract

This paper describes the design of an adaptive controller based on model reference adaptive PID control (MRAPIDC) to stabilize a two-tank process when large variations of parameters and external disturbances affect the closed-loop system. To achieve that, an innovative structure of the adaptive PID controller is defined, an additional PI is designed to make sure that the reference model produces stable output signals and three adaptive gains are included to guarantee stability and robustness of the closed-loop system. Then, the performance of the model reference adaptive PID controller on the behaviour of the closed-loop system is compared to a PI controller designed on MATLAB when both closed-loop systems are under various conditions. The results demonstrate that the MRAPIDC performs significantly better than the conventional PI controller.