Evaluation of various benchmark processes with appropriate controller design in LabVIEW platform

Abstract

Engineering education needs simulation studies and it is the best way of understanding engineering concepts with minimal cost and energy. The main focus of this present work is to provide a workspace especially in LabVIEW for analyzing the performance of the system and to operate them in stable and controlled regions. LabVIEW is a simulation platform which facilitates the simulation of various systems and their response with various controllers programmed using functional blocks that are easy to understand. In this work, the benchmark test systems like DC series motor as first order system, general second order system and a Real time rotary Inverted Pendulum (RIP) model which has been reduced with high order system reduction technique are considered. The test systems are controlled with PID controller tuned by various tuning methods. The PID controller is tuned with conventional methods like Ziegler-Nichols (ZN), Internal Model Control (IMC), and Direct Synthesis (DS) and the responses of the systems are analysed in LabVIEW platform. The common platform has been developed and tested for supporting the performance and analysis of the system with adjustable PID controller parameters like proportional gain K p , integral time constant T i, and derivative time constant T d . The performance specifications are phase margin, gain margin, bandwidth, settling time, rise time and integral errors. This LabVIEW platform facilitates the learners to analyze the system effectively with various controllers and their performance parameters are compared easily. K: Control systems; Overall mechanics design (support structures and materials, vibration analysis etc); Voltage distributions 1Corresponding author.