Automated design of fractional PI QFT controller using interval constraint satisfaction technique (ICST)

In this paper, a fractional-order proportional-integral (FOPI) controller is proposed and designed for a class of nonlinear integer-order (IO) systems. For fair comparison, the proposed FOPI and the traditional integer-order PID (IOPID) controllers are designed following the same set of imposed tuning constraints, which can guarantee the desired control performance and the robustness of the designed controllers to the loop gain variations. This proposed design scheme offers a practical and systematic way of controller design for the nonlinear IO plant. We also propose a new and efficient method for automated synthesis of a fixed structure Quantitative Feedback Theory (QFT) FO controller. This is achieved by solving QFT quadratic inequalities of robust stability and performance specifications. The controller synthesis problem is posed as interval constraint satisfying problem (ICSP) and solved with interval constraint solver. The main feature of this method is that it guarantees to find all feasible controllers of given structure in the specified search domain. The designed FOPI and the traditional IOPID controllers are tested on the experimental setup designed by Educational Control Product (ECP) Magnetic Levitation Setup ECP 730. From the experimental results presented, it is observed that the designed FO controllers work more efficiently, with improved performance compared with the designed stabilizing IOPID controller.