Fractional order controller design and Particle Swarm Optimization applied to a nonlinear system

This work focuses on the development and real time implementation of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based PI controller and Fractional Order Proportional Integral (FO-PI) controller for a nonlinear system. The nonlinear system taken up for study is conical tank level system whose parameters vary with respect to the process variable. Data acquisition card PCI. 6251 (Peripheral Computer Interconnect) is used for acquisition purposes. The performance comparison of the ZN/PI, PSO/PI and FO-PI controllers are compared based on performance indices like maximum peak overshoot, settling time and Integral Square Error (ISE). The proposed FO-PI controller and PSO/PI controller is tested on the chosen nonlinear system and better controller performance can be envisaged by in the proposed methods than that of the ZN/PI controller.