instrumentation

When is PID
Not the Answer?
Social media group member posits the question: How come PID is the
answer to so many applications? Is it because advanced control is rarely
needed or that control engineers are not pushing the envelope?

P
David Greenfield ID has long been one of the more
Control Engineering popular topics covered at Control
Engineering, and for good reason—
our subscribers see it as an inte-
gral component of their work. The
popularity of the topic among control engineers
worldwide does not appear to be waning either.
Looking back over the past two years, loop tun-
ing and PID-related articles are consistently
among the most popular articles visited on the
Control Engineering Website.
So when Parasar Kodati, application support
engineer at the MathWorks, posted this question
on the Automation & Control Engineering Linke-
dIn site: “When PID is not the answer: What
Standard PID algorithm
is Advanced Control good for?” a high level of
response was assured.
Kodati noted that, while a graduate stu-
dent, he was “amazed by the subject of con-
trol and couldn’t wait to see the applications
of the theory applied in industry.” Three years
after graduation, however, he began to wonder
why PID seemed to be the answer for so many
applications.
Members of the social media group quickly
responded, and continued to do so for months
after the initial post. Their responses largely
broke out along three lines: why PID is right for
so many applications, when advanced control is
more suitable, and how to analyze a situation to
determine if PID or advanced con-
trol is the best option.

When PID is enough

Disturbances “From my experience, a great many
1 systems have very simple dynam-
Setpoint Error ics, and in these situations PID is
1 + often sufficient to provide the per-
+
--
Kp
Ti ∫ +
+
+
Process +
formance needed,” said Doug Harri-
d
man, senior mechatronics engineer
Td dt at Hewlett-Packard. “PID control-
lers can be more intuitive to tune.
Controller It’s easier to reason out the expected
behavior when changing one of the
PID gains than it is to think about
Process variable pole placement.”
He also noted that, since most
Source: Control Engineering
engineers “never take any advanced
control theory,” this could be anoth-
The standard or ISA standard form of the PID algorithm allows a user to simultaneously er reason behind PID’s popularity.
adjust the contributions of all three terms by means of a single tuning parameter (Kp). The Kareem Suhwail, systems engi-
proportional, integral, and derivative actions all depend on the value of Kp; hence the alter- neer at RoviSys, says that, from
native label dependent or dependent ideal PID. This arrangement is occasionally labeled the an automation perspective, PID is
academic algorithm even though academicians rarely use it. Source: Control Engineering, more than enough for 99% of con-
“Sorting Out PID Controller Differences” by Vance VanDoren, February 2009. trol situations. “Realize that, while
54 ● MARCH 2010 CONTROL ENGINEERING ● www.controleng.com

studying advanced controls, you are often given
transfer functions, block diagrams, state equa-
tions, etc., it is virtually impossible to model
a running production line with these and it is
unrealistic to perform an expensive advanced
control analysis for the small gains it would give
you over PID,” he said.
“Most control loops in the chemical indus-
try, while non-linear to some degree, are linear
enough in the normal control region near set-
point” for which PID works fine, said Joseph
Alford, a consultant with Automation Consult-
ing Services. It may not be not optimal control,
but it’s good enough.
Alford also echoed Harriman’s comments
that most engineers typically do not take more
than one undergraduate control course and so
“have only been trained on PID and a few relat-
ed simple control configurations (e.g., cascade).”
Add to the education factor PID’s simplicity and
off-the-shelf availability, and you have three
very big reasons for PID’s dominance in control
applications.
In another part of his comment, Alford
referred to a survey he had seen which indicated
that audits of many industrial control loops using
model-based or other complex control strategies
often had the loops set in manual mode. Alford
said this was often the case after the engineer
who designed the advanced control strategy had
moved on to another assignment. This indicates
that, for most engineers, it is “difficult to main-
tain continuous support of complex control loops
when new support people are not familiar with
the control algorithm. There are probably also
validation issues regarding complex control algo-
rithms in highly regulated industries such as
pharmaceutical, biotech, medical devices, and
nuclear,” said Alford.
Though many industrial processes are
becoming more challenging, Thomas Swift, an
industrial automation and control profession-
al, says that PID remains his tool of choice for
most of the control issues he encounters. Even
in many advanced applications, “classical meth-
ods such as feed forward and cascaded feed-
back are, in my experience, much preferred to
increasing the complexity of the core control
algorithm,” he said.
The secret to the success of PID-based con-
trol architectures (such as ratio control, cascade
control, and feedforward control), according to
Massimiliano Veronesi, product marketing man-
ager at Yokogawa, are the low cost/high benefit
ratio they provide. “It is not always easy to mea-
sure the performance improvement provided by
Automation & Control
social media forums
To become a part of the conversation or
merely follow the “Automation & Control”
discussions in real-time, access the forums on
Facebook and LinkedIn via the following links:
• Automation & Control Engineering group on
LinkedIn: http://tinyurl.com/y8tckah
• Automation & Control group on Facebook:
http://tinyurl.com/yk43xmf
[advanced] control strategies and translate it into
a real return on investment.”
Alternate options
While most respondents agree that PID is good
enough for most control applications, what about
those instances when it’s not good enough?
What then are the best options engineers should
learn more about in order to consider them for
application?
“PID only, in its simplest form, is not enough
for position control for extremely dynamic or
second order systems,” said Richard Meyer-
hoefer, sales manager at Delta Computer Sys-
tems Inc. “Advanced algorithms are available
that will create a system model and automati-
cally calculate additional gains such as velocity
feed forwards, acceleration and deceleration feed
forwards, jerk feed forwards, and double deriv-
atives. These advanced gains are based upon
natural frequencies. PID is used to correct for
non-linearity. Feed forwards should be able to
correct for 90% of the error. In these cases, [only
using] PID leads to very unstable systems.”
Meyerhoefer adds that it is often a lack of
understanding on the part of many engineers
that lead them to abandon closed loop control
options in favor of more mechanical options.
Unfortunately, in many instances, these options
often lead to a lack of repeatability, lower resolu-
tion, and increased down time.
PID coupled with Smith Predictor can address
simple transport delays easily, according to Ser-
gei Kuznetsov, principal control systems engineer
at The Automation Group. He noted that he has
seen Smith Predictor used for a wood chip level
control that had been working in manual mode
for more than 20 years. “The client ended up
saving $1.5 million dollars in raw material costs
annually (about 7%),” Kuznetsov said. ONLINE
“Model-based control is clearly a superior To access all Control
approach, from the standpoint of responsive- Engineering PID-related
ness, following errors and settle time, in those content, input “PID” into the
situations where it can be applied,” said Michael search box atop any page at
Thompson, principal development analyst at The www.controleng.com.
www.controleng.com ● CONTROL ENGINEERING MARCH 2010 ● 55
 instrumentation

There are also many situations where non-lin-

The ideal form of the PID formula
ear gain scheduling can be effectively employed
in a PID control-loop without additional sensors
or significant complexity, according to Thomp-
son. In such cases, the gain-scheduling may sim-
ply be a transfer function that maps a non-linear
variable to a more linear one. In these cases, the
PID controller would act the same.

CO(t) is the controller’s current output; e(t) = SP - PV (t) is the
error between the set point (SP) and the process variable
PV(t); P is the controller gain; T1 is the integral time TD is the
derivative time. Source: Control Engineering, “Loop Tuning
Fundamentals,” by Vance VanDoren, July 2003.
Timken Co. “However, model-based control often
requires additional terms in the feedback loop.
For example, if I am trying to change the temper-
ature of a volume of liquid in a storage contain-
er, it definitely helps to know how much liquid
is present in addition to the temperature of the
liquid. Charging a battery is a similar problem.
It helps to know how much charge it already
has. Sometimes that information is not so easy to
determine from the available sensors.”
Don’t forget advanced control basics
While it’s tempting to apply any If a loop has large dead time, then
number of advanced control meth- you won’t get great control from
ods to optimize a given process any feedback controller because
to its ultimate in performance, the feedback control is like driving
reality is that most processes—and your car by looking in the rearview
process owners—do not require mirror.
that level of control. If the control • Most plant personnel don’t
method can’t deliver in terms of know how well their existing con-
cost and quality improvements, it’s trols are performing. “I’ve person-
usually not the answer you need. ally been in hundreds of plants,
To keep your control method and typically 30% of PID loops
decisions as useful as possible, are running in manual mode, and
George Buckbee, vice president nobody knew it,” said Buckbee. He
of marketing and product devel- adds that control loop monitoring
opment at ExperTune Inc., offers software can be used to diagnose
these four checkpoints: and give visibility to instrument,
• Realize that the control hard- valve, and control performance.
ware in an existing plant is often • Focus on the root cause of
in bad condition. A typical process process upsets. “I have seen many
plant can expect about 30% of plants installing model predictive
control valves to have mechanical control on distillation columns,
issues, says Buckbee. “If you have when the fundamental problem is
sticky control valves, noisy instru- process upsets coming from utili-
mentation, or poor installations, ties. You’ll often get a better return
then it doesn’t really matter what on investment from stabilizing the
type of controller you have. You boiler plant operations,” he said.
will still have poor performance.” The trick is to be able to analyze
• Have reasonable expectations. the data for root cause.
56 ● MARCH 2010 CONTROL ENGINEERING ● www.controleng.com
Application advice
Regardless of whether PID is adequate for most
applications or not, the only thing that real-
ly matters from an engineering perspective is
which control method will provide the optimal
result for the particular application the engineer
happens to be working on at the time. This next
set of advice from practicing engineers addressed
just that.
As a starting point, Igor Begelfor, instrument
package engineer at AMEC, suggests that when
PID does not work, start looking at the field mea-
surement and control devices, as they have likely
been misapplied. Once you’ve eliminated these
as the problem and concluded that PID may not
provide the optimal control for your project, it’s
time to start looking closely at the application.
Recalling work on systems with extensive
higher order dynamics that needed to meet
stringent stability and tracking requirements,
Hai Ho, vice president of engineering and prod-
uct development at HID Global, noted his use of
multi-variable state space, adaptive, and learning
control methods rather than PID. The systems
requiring this advanced level of control were: a
digital flight control system for satellite missiles;
and controlling the position of a magnetic read/
write head to the micro-inch accuracy under
wind disturbance conditions equivalent to a cat-
egory 4 hurricane.
Offering a more practical example using non-
linear gain scheduling, consider the problem of a
scanning CMM (coordinate measuring machine),
suggested Michael Thompson, principal develop-
ment analyst at The Timken Co. “During scan-
ning of the surfaces, the axes of the machine are
controlled using feedback from a probe. How-
ever, most probes only provide feedback over a
very narrow range. A contact-based probe cannot
provide useful feedback when it is not in con-
tact with the surface or when it is over deflected.
Also, these machines generally try to scan the
surface with minimal probing forces (for reduced
wear, less deformation of the surface, and great-
er accuracy). So the control problem is highly
asymmetric,” he said.
“Near the target force/deflection (when error
is nearly zero), acceptable and stable control can
be achieved with linear gains and standard PID
 Tank Gauging Problems?

control. But when the probe is undeflected, the error signal

is low (because of the low target force) so you must rely on
heavy integral gain in order to achieve a reasonable approach LIQUID LEVEL COMPUTERS
velocity,” Thompson said. “That heavy integral control is not
necessarily desirable once the probe is in contact with the
part. In fact, the integrator wind up in such a case can lead to The LevelCom 100 uses pulsed bubbler
over-deflection of the probe during overshoot after the probe depth sensing technology, which resolves
makes contact. Likewise, if the probe approaches an over- many of the problems long associated
deflection condition, it is desirable to drive it much harder with continuous flow bubblers and
than normal in order to avoid the over-deflection.”
reduces air consumption.
One technique that Thompson said he has used to address
these problems is to “apply control action that is proportional
to the cube of the error term in addition to the normal (linear)
proportional control. The cube is used to maintain the sign of
the error term. To address the asymmetry, I chose to toggle
the gain sets depending on whether the probe was minimally
deflected or not, but a quadratic term could also be used to
create asymmetry. One reason why I have preferred to toggle
the gain sets is due to the fact that the damping of the probe
changes when it is in contact with the surface.”
Ultimately, Thompson says the gains are chosen so that
there is a linear region around zero error. “Via non-lineari-
ty (cubic and quadratic for example), the transfer function is
made much stronger than normal when the probe approach-
es an undeflected or over-deflected condition,” he said. “The
stronger response in these regions would not be stable if it
was applied linearly throughout the range of probe deflection.
Applications can be in a vented or pressurized
Therefore, the zero-error condition becomes a region of stabil-
ity where gains are sufficiently low to avoid instability.” tank the liquid must be able to tolerate air or
nitrogen injection. Typical applications include oils,
Final analysis fuel, potable water, viscous fluids, slurries, acids,
Helping to encapsulate this wide-ranging discussion, one post wastewater and foaming liquids.
in particular got to the core of the issue as it pertains to the
day-to-day duties of a control engineer.
Thomas Stevic, a controls engineer at DMAX, said that Features include:
when designing a solution to a problem, he finds that he typi-
cally has two masters to serve. The first master is the person • Field configurable with multiple set points
who is responsible for the output of his design. This is often and specific gravity corrections
“the person who pays the bills,” Stevic said. “These people
usually do not care how a machine or process works. Their • Integrates with third party controllers, DCS,
concern is: Does the machine make what it is supposed to data acquisition systems, and software
make? While exotic solutions may increase quality, decrease
production time, make better use of resources and, from an • Modbus connectivity standard with DeviceNet
engineering viewpoint, be very cool to use and inch closer to and Profibus available
perfection, their use is not often a benefit to the first master.”
The second master is described by Stevic as the person or • Diagnostic capabilities detect leaks, plugged lines,
people who will “maintain the system after I am gone. Ulti- pressure problems, and hardware errors.
mately, my designs have to address the least capable people
who may be required to maintain or modify my design.”
Given the requirements of the second master, Stevic says
that, given a choice between using adaptive neural network TMS
control or a thermostat, if the thermostat will work, that is 6040 N. Cutter Circle, Suite 302
what he will choose. “If neural nets or fuzzy logic are required Portland, OR 97217
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David Greenfield is editorial director. Reach him at david. www.levelcom.net
greenfield@reedbusiness.com.
www.controleng.com ● CONTROL ENGINEERING MARCH 2010 ● 57