Development of a multivariable control system on an experimental platform dedicated to the study of fouling phenomena

This paper presents the development of a multivariable control system for regulation of the physical quantities associated to the fouling phenomena on an experimental platform. This platform is considered as a two-by-two system, i.e., the voltage and current as the inputs system and the flow and pressure as the outputs system. In the Matlab scripts, the plant model was identified as a set of first-order or second-order systems with dead time. Furthermore, the Relative Gain Array (RGA) and Relative Normalized Gain Array (RNGA) were calculated to find the best pairing among loops. The diagonal and off-diagonal pairings were verified by means of PI/PID decentralized controllers, which were designed using the IMC tuning method. At last, the output control performance was evaluated using the ISE performance metric.