An instructive reference that will help control researchers and engineers interested in a
variety of industrial processes to take advantage of a powerful tuning method for the
ever-popular PID control paradigm. This monograph presents explicit PID tuning rules for linear
control loops regardless of process complexity. It shows the reader how such loops achieve zero
steady-position velocity and acceleration errors and are thus able to track fast reference
signals. The theoretical development takes place in the frequency domain by introducing a
general-transfer-function-known process model and by exploiting the principle of the magnitude
optimum criterion. It is paralleled by the presentation of real industrial control loops used
in electric motor drives. The application of the proposed tuning rules to a large class of
processes shows that irrespective of the complexity of the controlled process the shape of the
step and frequency response of the control loop exhibits a specific performance. This specific
performance along with the PID explicit solution formulates the basis for developing an
automatic tuning method for the PID controller parameters which is a problem often met in many
industry applications-temperature pH and humidity control ratio control in product blending
and boiler-drum level control for example. The process of the model is considered unknown and
controller parameters are tuned automatically such that the aforementioned performance is
achieved. The potential both for the explicit tuning rules and the automatic tuning method is
demonstrated using several examples for benchmark process models recurring frequently in many
industry applications.
