Better operational control of water networks
can help reduce leakage, maintain pressure, and
control flow. Proportional integral derivative
(PID) controllers, with proper fine-tuning, can
help water utility operators achieve targets faster
without creating undue transients. The authors
compared three tuning methods, in different test
situations, involving flow and level control to
different reservoirs. Although target values were
reached with all three tuning methods, the methods'
performances varied significantly. The lowest
performer among the three was the method
most widely used in the industry, standard
tuning by the Ziegler-Nichols method. Achieving
better results was offline tuning by genetic algorithms.
Achieving the best control, though, was
a fuzzy logic-based online tuning approach, the
FZPID controller. The FZPID controller had
fewer overshoots and took significantly less time
to tune the gains for each problem. This new
tuning approach for PID controllers can be
applied to a variety of problems and can
increase the performance of water networks of
any size and structure. Includes 12 references, tables, figures.
| Edition : | Vol. 101 - No. 7 |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 830 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 13 |
| Published : | 07/01/2009 |
