Analytical design of two-degree-of-freedom control scheme for open-loop unstable processes with time delay

This paper proposes an analytical two-degree-of-freedom control scheme for open-loop unstable processes with time delay, which leads to the remarkable improvement of regulatory capacity for both of reference input tracking and load disturbance rejection. Firstly a conventional proportional or plus derivative controller is deliberately employed for stabilizing the setpoint response. Then the setpoint tracking controller is analytically derived in terms of the integral-squared-error (ISE) performance specification. By proposing the desired closed-loop complementary sensitivity function for rejecting load disturbances, the corresponding controller, i.e. disturbance estimator, is inversely figured out. Hence the nominal setpoint response is decoupled from the load disturbance response by virtue of the open-loop control manner for the setpoint tracking. In consequence, both of them can be optimized simultaneously and separately. At the same time, robust stability analysis for the proposed control structure is provided in the presence of the process multiplicative uncertainty. Accordingly the on-line tuning rule for the single adjustable parameter of each controller is suggested to cope with the process unmodeled dynamics in practice. Finally, several illustrative examples are included to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method.