Veröffentlichungen und Präsentationen

A laboratory exercise to learn PID controller tuning can be time consuming and taxing on the equipment. A purely equation-based, virtual controller tuning exercise might not seem relevant to real world processes. We have combined a physical process with a COMSOL Multiphysics model to teach the practical aspects of PID controller tuning. Students ran simulated experiments with COMSOL to test controller tuning methods before running a physical experiment to control the temperature inside a jacketed, well-stirred reactor vessel. Students tried to minimize the integral absolute error while studying the effect of adjusting control parameters. Some students particularly liked the friendly competition of trying to find the lowest integral absolute error and the use of the COMSOL model.