Stability analysis and tuning strategies for a novel next generation regulatory controller

The popular PID controller, even though versatile, possesses well-known characteristics that limit its achievable performance, and an intrinsic structure that makes it´s tuning not as transparent. We recently developed a novel 4-mode control scheme that takes full advantage of the modern electronic hardware components, and whose tuning parameters are related directly to controller performance attributes (robustness, set-point tracking, and disturbance rejection); its achievable performance is better, and it can be designed and implemented much more directly and transparently. We present rigorous robust stability results for the proposed controller for any given plant/model mismatch. These results are then used to generate procedures for selecting values for the controller tuning parameters. The controller design and tuning is illustrated via simulation on a nonlinear polymerization process.