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Abstract
This paper presents a simple and new method for detecting valve stiction in an oscillating control loop. The method is based on
the calculation of areas before and after the peak of an oscillating signal. The proposed method is intuitive, requires very little computational eort, and is easy to implement online. Analytical results are derived to show the theoretical basis of the new method and
eld results are presented to show its eectiveness on real world control loops.
2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Control; Stiction; Oscillation diagnosis; Valves (mechanical); Actuators
1. Introduction
Surveys in the process industry have revealed that almost 30% of control loops are oscillating [1,2]. Oscillating loops are undesirable because they increase
variability in product quality, accelerate equipment
wear, and may cause oscillations in other interacting
loops. Thus, detection, diagnosis, and correction of
oscillations are important activities in control loop
supervision and maintenance.
Some common causes of oscillations are (i) external
oscillating disturbances, (ii) poor controller tuning, (iii)
nonlinearities in the actuator/plant such as static and/
or dynamic nonlinearities, and stiction, or (iv) a combination of these. In this paper, we focus on distinguishing
oscillations caused by valve stiction from those caused
by poor loop tuning, and assume that oscillations have
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 414 524 4688/4660; fax: +1 414
524 5810.
E-mail addresses: ashish.singhal@jci.com (A. Singhal), timothy.i.
salsbury@jci.com (T.I. Salsbury).
0959-1524/$ - see front matter 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jprocont.2004.10.001
372
Aggressive control
A1
control error
control error
A1
____
~1
A2
A
1
____
>1
A2
time
time
Fig. 1. Control error signal shapes for valve stiction and aggressive control.
square-shaped control error signal, while an aggressive controller produced a sinusoidal signal. Ruel also
proposed a test to quantify the amount of stiction by
putting the controller in manual mode, and then executing a series of small step-changes in the controller output until the controlled variable showed a change in
its steady-state value.
Our new automated method is also based on distinguishing between the shapes of the signals caused by
an aggressive controller and a sticking valve using the
ratio of the areas before and after the peak of the control error signal 1 as shown in Fig. 1. The idea is simple,
easy to implement online, and requires little computational eort.
This paper presents the proposed method in Section
2. The stiction model of Choudhury et al. [10] is discussed in Section 3 and a theoretical analysis of the
method is presented in Section 4. We focus on presenting a theoretical framework for analyzing oscillations
caused by stiction in closed loops and illustrate the idea
using a simplied stiction model and popular plant models. The same framework could be used to analyze oscillations with more complicated models.
A comparison between the results obtained using a
simplied stiction model and the complete Choudhury
model is presented in Section 5. Practical considerations
are discussed in Section 6 and a eld result is presented
in Section 7.
2. Proposed method
For self-regulating plants 2 with a monotone step-response, aggressive control usually results in a sinusoidal
control error signal, while for a sticking valve, the signal
typically follows exponential decay and rise as shown in
The control error is the dierence between the setpoint and the
process variable being controlled.
2
Plant with all left-half plane poles.
A1
:
A2
K p eLs
;
T 1 s 1T 2 s 1 . . . T n s 1
Gp
K p ehs
;
ss 1
373
6
s T6
41
1e
n1
nP
1
i0
n1i
i!
n1n1 en1
n1!
3
7
7
5
and
3
nP
1
n1i
1 en1
i!
6
7
i0
7:
h T6
n
1
n1
n1
4
5
2
n1 e
n1!
Adding the pure delay, L, to the apparent time-delay results in the eective time-delay ~h L h. We dene a
quantity k as the ratio of the eective time-delay to the
apparent time-constant:
374
Table 1
k values for nth-order plants (L = 0)
n
k
1
0
2
0.16
3
0.37
4
0.55
5
0.72
6
0.88
7
1.03
~
h
:
6
s
The ratio k usually indicates the diculty of controla
large k means that the plant is more dicult to control
with a PI controller. The variation of k with n for plants
with zero pure-delay is presented in Table 1. The
eect of k on the inputoutput (I/O) characteristics of
a sticking valve will be discussed in the following
section.
k,
band and the slip jump part can be seen. This process
is shown by the solid line in Fig. 2 and has the same
characteristics as a relay with hysteresis. The stiction
models used by Stenman et al. [6] and Horch [7] also
have the characteristics of a relay.
The sliding part shown in Fig. 2(b) appears when a
time-delay is added to the plant. For small values of k,
the relay is a good approximation of the Choudhury
model. Note that the Choudhury model becomes a relay
with hysteresis when k = 0.
For a second-order plus time-delay (SOPTD) plant,
the relay approximation becomes less accurate because
the k values are larger as shown in Fig. 2(c). Because
k > 0 for a SOPTD plant, the relay model is always an
approximation for this system. Fig. 2(d) presents the
I/O characteristics of a sticking valve when the pure
time-delay is zero. This gure shows that for higher-order plants, the relay model becomes less accurate compared to the Choudhury model because k increases
with the plant order. When k is small, the relay is a good
approximation of the stiction behavior.
The results in this section also demonstrate that
although L and h are dierent in nature, both result in
the emergence of the sliding part of stick-slip behavior.
Fig. 2 shows that the I/O characteristics of a sticking
valve in closed-loop depend not only on the deadband
and slip-jump parameters, but also on the plant dynamics. We will show later in the paper that a pure timedelay contributes more to the dierences in the two
models than higher-order dynamics.
es
;
Ts 1
1 6 T 6 10
375
= 0.5
= 0.1
= 0.83
=0
slip jump
deadband+stickband
valve input/controller output (u)
valve input (u)
= 0.45
third
order
= 0.63
= 0.16
relay
( = 0)
= 0.22
first
order
pure time
delay = 0
1.5
Gp =
e-s
Ts+1
Gc =
Kc(I s+1)
I s
paxsI 1 x2 T 2 :
imaginary axis
0.5
The solution of Eq. (8) is xosc and the oscillation halfperiod is b = p/xosc.
Remarks:
increasing osc
-1
-1.5
-1
-1
N(a)
Gc(j) Gp(j)
-0.5
-0.8
-
4
increasing a
osc
-0.6
-0.4
real axis
-0.2
0.2
Describing function: N a
h p
i1
p
pe
2
2
.
4d a e j 4d
376
k bt=2bc;
10
0 6 t < 2b;
tz
b=T
1
. After substiwhere tz T loge 1 K 1 and K 1 e
e2b=T 1
tuting Eq. (10) in Eq. (11), the expression for the ratio
R = A1/A2 is found to be:
b t
z 1 K 1 eb=T etz =T
:
12
R T T
1 K 1 1 etz =T tTz
0.5
b=1
T=1
0.25
A2
A1
p (t)
0
A2
0.25
tz
0.5
0
0.5
1.5
t
Fig. 4. Steady-state response of a rst-order plant to a rectangularwave.
10
b /T
Fig. 5. Variation of the area ratio, R, with b/T for a FOPTD plant.
10
b=1
T=1
ZieglerNichols
CHR
(0% overshoot)
0.1
377
AMIGO
R 5
1,2
p (t)
0
0
CohenCoon
A 1,1
A2
1
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
0.1
compared to more conservative tuning using the AMIGO and CHR methods.
Out of the four curves of Fig. 6, only the CHR curve
shows non-monotonic behavior. The reason for this
behavior is that the CHR tuning rule uses only the
time-constant to calculate the integral time while the
other three methods use the time-delay information as
well. Thus, for small k (or large T), the CHR rule results
in larger sI compared to the other three tuning methods
and consequently results in larger values of R.
4.2. Second-order plus time-delay (SOPTD) plant
The SOPTD plant considered in this analysis is [14]:
es
Ts 1
13
1 6 T 6 10:
K2
"
"
K3
1
1 e
1 e
1
b=T
2b=T
2b=T e
2
e2b=T
Z tp
Z b
p0 t dt
p0 t dt;
A1
0
tz
|
{z} |{z}
A1;1
A2
17
A1;2
tz
p0 t dt;
18
tp
20
A2 tp tz T 1 K 2 etp =T etz =T T 1 K 3
1 tp =T etp =T 1 tz =T etz =T :
#
;
15
16
21
e 1
:
e2b=T 1
1.5
and
2b=T
14
2
e2b=T
b=T 2
0.5
b + tp
p0 t 1 1 K 2 1 K 3 t=T et=T
where
Fig. 6. Variation of the area ratio, R, with 1/T for a FOPTD plant and
dierent PI controller tuning rules.
Gp s
tz
A1
:
A2
22
378
methods result in R < 1 because they produce controllers that are too aggressive.
Fig. 9 shows that although the R-curves for ZN and
CC methods are close to each other, their MS and MT
curves are far apart. The reason for this discrepancy appears to be the dierence in the controller setttings calulated by the two methods. While both ZN and CC
methods result in very similar controller gains, the CC
method calculates shorter integral times. Thus, the MS
and MT values are larger for the CC method. Also, it appears that shorter integral time aects R less than the
sensitivity functions.
10
R
2nd order system
10
b/T
Fig. 8. Variation of the area ratio, R, with b/T for a SOPTD plant.
379
10
CHR
AMIGO
5
CC
ZN
1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
5
AMIGO
ZN
CHR
CC
1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
5
AMIGO
MT
ZN
CHR
CC
1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
Fig. 9. Variation of the area ratio, R, with k for a SOPTD plant and dierent PI controller tuning rules.
10
relay model
10
relay model
5
Choudhury
model
Choudhury
model
1
1
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
Fig. 10. Comparison of the area ratio, R using the relay and the Choudhury models with the AMIGO PI controller tuning rule.
Fig. 12 shows the variation of R for dierent plant orders (cf. Eq. (3)) with no pure time-delay. In this situa-
380
valve output
0.12
Choudhury
stiction model
0.08
relay
0.04
0
270
280
time
290
300
Fig. 11. Valve output using the Choudhury model for a FOPTD plant
(k = 0.5, deadband = slip-jump = 0.1).
10
L=0
5
relay model
Choudhury
model
1
0 (1)
0.16 (2)
0.37 (3)
(n)
Fig. 12. Comparison of R for the relay and the Choudhury models.
The controller for every plant-order is tuned using the AMIGO
method and the plant-orders are shown in parentheses with their k
values.
6. Practical considerations
The stiction detection method proposed in this paper
is designed for single-input single-output (SISO) control
loops and self-regulating plants with monotone stepresponse. The methodology is not designed for integrating plants because stiction results in a triangular-wave
with R = 1. In this situation, other methods such as
the one proposed by [8] or [9] may be used, however,
the user may still have to contend with noise and computational issues.
1c
;
1 cq1
c e3xosc T s ;
23
381
control error
control error
filtered signal
(solid line)
500
600
700
800
900
1000
3200
time [min]
3300
3400
3500
3600
time [min]
Fig. 13. Detection of the presence of stiction in a control loop using the proposed method.
stiction
if R > 1 d;
aggressive control otherwise;
7. Field result
The proposed stiction detection method was used to
diagnose the cause of oscillations in a room temperature
control loop in a commercial building. The loop was
oscillating with a period of approximately 13 min.
Detuning the controller increased the period to 62 min
but did not eliminate the oscillations. Fig. 13 presents
the oscillating behavior of the control error signal before
and after the detuning. The average R value for the period after detuning is about 2.5, which is suciently large
to conclude that the oscillations are caused by stiction.
Further examination of the actuators movement conrmed that the oscillations were caused by stick-slip
behavior.
References
[1] W.L. Bialkowski, Dreams vs. reality: a view from both sides of the
gap, in: Control Systems 92 Conference, Whistler, BC, Canada,
1992, pp. 283294.
[2] L. Desborough, P. Nordh, R. Miller, Control system reliability:
process out of control, Indus. Comput. 2 (8) (2001) 5255, http://
www.loopscout.com/Info/Intech.pdf.
[3] N.F. Thornhill, T. Hagglund, Detection and diagnosis of oscillations in control loops, Control Engr. Practice 5 (1997) 1343
1354.
382
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