Control of integral processes with dead-time. 1. Disturbance observer-based 2 DOF control scheme

A disturbance observer-based control scheme (a version of 2 DOF internal model control) which is very effective in controlling integral processes with dead time is presented. The controller can be designed to reject ramp disturbances as well as step disturbances and even arbitrary disturbances. When the plant model is available only two parameters are left to tune. One is the time constant of the set-point response and the other is the time constant of the disturbance response. The latter is tuned according to the compromise between disturbance response and robustness. This control scheme has a simple, clear, easy-to-design, easy-to-implement structure and good performance. It is compared to the best results (so far) using some simulation examples