Decoupled PID controller for wind tunnel system

Implementation of a decoupled PID control strategy to a wind tunnel control system is described in this paper. Two coupled variables, stagnation pressure and Mach number, are controlled in the wind tunnel system. The wind tunnel exhibits common features of industrial systems including non-linear dynamics, time delay and coupling effects among variables. A decoupler is first introduced in this control scheme. Next, a reduced order model is determined for the decoupled wind tunnel process. Then, the PID controller is obtained using the non-dimensional tuning (NDT) algorithm. Simulation experiments have confirmed good regulatory and tracking properties of the proposed control system.