Multivariable decoupling control for a benchmark boiler

The boiling process is a multivariable nonlinear system with strong interactions and input constraints. In this paper, a multivariable PID control with feed-forward compensation is designed for a benchmark boiler control problem, where the boiler model is proposed in an IFAC Conference and can be used as a benchmark for various control methods. The proposed PID controller is obtained as a result of approximating an ideal decoupler including the integral action. Due to the input constraints, a conditioning anti-windup strategy has been incorporated in the controller implementation. Experiment simulations show that the proposed design achieves better performance than the previous method.