Lecturer: Antonella Ferrara  

Course name: Process Control
Course code: 504462
Degree course: Computer Engeneering, Ingegneria Informatica, Ingegneria Elettrica
Disciplinary field of science: ING-INF/04
University credits: ECTS 6
Course website: n.d.

Specific course objectives

The course describes and analyzes control schemes which are frequently used at industrial level. It also provides the basics for the design of digital control systems.

Course programme

Industrial control schemes:
Cascade control, open loop control, filtering of the reference signal, compensation of measurable disturbances, two degrees of freedom control schemes, Smith Predictor, decentralized control, relative gain array, decoupling schemes.

PID controllers
Features and properties. Rules for the empirical calibration. Wind-up and anti wind-up schemes.

Digital control:
Discrete-time systems. The concept of equilibrium for discrete-time systems. Stability. Stability of linear time-invariant discrete-time systems. Jury test. Digital control schemes. Sampling problem. Choice of the sampling time. Discretization of continuous-time controllers. Euler and Tustin methods.

Course entry requirements

Knowledge acquired in previous courses in Automatic Control and Mathematical Methods in Engineering

Course structure and teaching

Lectures (hours/year in lecture theatre): 45
Practical class (hours/year in lecture theatre): 0
Practicals / Workshops (hours/year in lecture theatre): 0

Suggested reading materials

Lecture notes

Paolo Bolzern, Riccardo Scattolini, Nicola Schiavoni. Fondamenti di controlli automatici. McGraw-Hill, Milano. (In Italian).

Carlos A. Smith, Armando B. Corripio . Principles and Practices of Automatic Process Control. John Wiley & Sons.

Testing and exams

Written test