Experimenting with constrained dead time compensators for FOTD systems

Abstract

Plant approximations by the first order plus dead time systems represent the most frequently used plant models in control design. The paper describes experimental environment enabling to demonstrate by virtual and real time experiments all aspects of a successful dead time compensator design. The batch of possible experiments includes verification of control constraints impacts, phenomena related with control of unstable plants, input and output disturbances and measurement & quantization noise. By a series of such experiments it is possible to demonstrate, when a continuous-time solutions are not satisfactory and some discrete-time implementations have to be used, or when a filtered Smith predictor does not represent the optimal solution and an alternative disturbance observer based compensator has to be chosen instead.