A low cost research platform for modeling and control of multi-input multi-output fractional order dynamic systems

This paper introduces a low cost temperature control experimental platform for hardware-in-the-loop simulations. It is developed based on the thermal electronic elements to emulate a temperature control loop in a chemical process. The novel aspect lies in the discovery and discussion of some interesting characteristics of this hardware setup through experiments, which includes the fractional order inverse response behavior, the “open loop linear while closed loop nonlinear” behavior and so forth. These phenomena provide more physical evidences for revealing the value of fractional calculus.