Performance Analysis of Model Predictive Control for Cascaded Tank Level Control System

In any process control application, controller design is the most important part. There are various types of controller architectures available in control literature. Model predictive control (MPC) is a class of the advanced control techniques most widely used in the process control industries. MPC controller has been designed for a cascaded tank level control system. The proposed control system has been simulated in MATLAB/Simulink environment. The performance results of the MPC controller have been compared with different conventional controllers like PI controller, IMC-PI controller, fractional order PI controller in terms of performance indices like integral time square error (ITSE), integral of time absolute error (ITAE), integral of square error (ISE), integral of absolute error (IAE) and root mean square error (RMS). Also, results of MPC controller have been compared with fractional order PI controller and IMC based PI controller. The performance indices of the system with different controllers are evaluated and plotted. Frequency analysis has been done and bode plot has been plotted, which shows the robustness of the controllers. The results indicate that MPC controller provides better robustness and performance as compared to IMC-PI controller, conventional PI controller and fractional order PI controller.