Plantwide control: a review and proposal of an augmented hierarchical plantwide control design technique.

Abstract

The problem of designing control systems for entire plants is studied. A review of previous works, available techniques and current research challenges is presented, followed by the description of some theoretical tools to improve plantwide control, including the proposal of an augmented lexicographic multi-objective optimization procedure. With these, an augmented hierarchical plantwide control design technique and an optimal multi-objective technique for integrated control structure selection and controller tuning are proposed. The main contributions of these proposed techniques are the inclusion of system identification and optimal control tuning as part of the plantwide design procedure for improved results, support to multi-objective control specifications and support to any type of plant and controllers. Finally, the proposed techniques are applied to industrial benchmarks to demonstrate and validate its applicability.