The magnitude optimum design of the PI controller for plants with complex roots and dead time

Analytical design of the PID-type controllers for linear plants based on the magnitude optimum criterion usually results in very good control quality and can be applied directly for high-order linear models with dead time, without need of any model reduction. This paper brings an analysis of properties of this tuning method in the case of the PI controller, which shows that it guarantees closed-loop stability and a large stability margin for stable linear plants without zeros, although there are limitations in the case of oscillating plants. In spite of the fact that the magnitude optimum criterion prescribes the closed-loop response only for low frequencies and the stability margin requirements are not explicitly included in the design objective, it reveals that proper open-loop behavior in the middle and high frequency ranges, decisive for the closed-loop stability and robustness, is ensured automatically for the considered class of linear systems if all damping ratios corresponding to poles of the plant transfer function without the dead-time term are sufficiently high.