2012 International Conference on Computing, Electronics and Electrical Technologies [ICCEET]
ANN Based MARC Controller Design for an Industrial Chemical Process
G.Glan Devadhas Dr.S.Pushpakumar
Associate professor Principal
Dept of EIE Heera College of Engineering
N.I. Centre for Higher Education
glandeva@gmail.com spushpakumar@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
This work aims to develop an Artificial Neural
Network based Model Reference Adaptive Control
strategy for an Industrial Process. The inherent
advantage of the Neural Network to adapt in real
time together with the effectiveness of Model
Reference Adaptive control is utilized in the control
of Industrial Chemical process.
Key words: CSTR process, MARC, ANN, Adaptive
I.INTRODUCTION
An intelligent system [13], [8] is a system that is able
to make decisions that would be regarded as
intelligent if were done by humans. In dealing with
highly sophisticated process control, where much
stability and accuracy are expected probably
perturbations may interface and disturb the output
variable. This disturbance is caused as the
perturbations are getting fed back through the error
detector to the controller. Intelligent controllers
adapt them they correct decisions automatically for
future .Neural network is such an intelligent system.
A neural network based model reference adaptive
control [17] is proposed to resolve the problem of
concentration control in CSTR process. This
proposed method can adjust the controller parameters
in response to changes in plant and disturbance in
real time by referring to the reference model that
specifies properties [15] of the desired control
system. Hence the optimization of the controller is
significant. It enhances stability over parameters and
makes the system ultimately immune to
perturbations. The resulting system [14]can be
viewed as a sort of adaptable control methodology.
The system is optimized [1], [9], [10] using the
neural supervisory control. The set of input and
output are predetermined using the model reference
adaptive system. The set of inputs and outputs thus
obtained are used for training the neural network .As
a solution to the mentioned problems, a control
strategy employing Model Reference Adaptive
control with a peripheral Neural Network Interface is
proposed
This paper presents here a comparative study of
the performance of the process with the convention
978-1-4673-0210-4112/$31.00 ©20l2 IEEE 375
D.M.Mary Synthia Regis Prabha
Associate Professor
Dept of EEE
N. I. Centre for Higher Education
regisprabha@gmail.com
PID control strategy and the advanced Model
Reference Adaptive control strategy. The
ineffectiveness of both these strategies to certain
application specific areas is presented. The
concentration and temperature control of the process
is done by using the model reference adaptive system
which gives more accurate response by minimizing
the error than using the generalized PID controller.
II.PROCESS DESCRIPTION
The schematic sketch of the Continuous­
Stirred-Tank Reactor (CSTR)[6,7] is shown in
figure.l
�
Product. out
Figure 1 Schematic Sketch of the Continuous Stirred
Tank Reactor (CSTR)
The reactor vessel volume is V. An agitator
is used to make the reactor contents be well mixed.
The inlet reactant with feed rate F, concentration Cin
and temperature Tm is fed from the top of the vessel.
The product stream is gathered at the exit. If the
reactor contents are perfectly mixed, then the
compositions are uniform everywhere in the reactor
and the product stream is at the same concentration
as the mixture in the reactor. In other words, the
composition concentration CA and temperature T at
which reaction takes place are the same as the
composition concentration and temperature of any
exit stream. Therefore, progress of reaction can be
monitored by observing the product stream
concentration CA and the reactor temperature T. The
 2012 International Conference on Computing, Electronics and Electrical Technologies [ICCEET]

exothermic chemical reaction taking place in a CSTR
produces a high heat of reaction. To maintain the
reactor temperature at its proper value, the jacket is
cooled or heated by the coolant with temperature Te.
It is assumed that the product concentration CA will
settle down to the desired value if the reactor
temperature T is controlled properly. Therefore, the
main objective in this research work is to properly
adjust the temperature of coolant To of the CSTR
control system such that the reactor temperature T
can follow the desired values even in the case of
disturbances in inlet reactant temperature Tin.
The component balance for the reactor can
be given as,
Fig 2 General Block Diagram of MRAController
The block diagram in fIg 2 shows the structure of a
MRAC system that composed of a plant containing
the unknown parameters, a reference model, and a
feedback control law containing adjustable
parameters.
Adaptive controller [10], [11] involves modifying the
control law used by a controller to cope with the fact
that the parameter [5] of the system being controlled
are slowly time varying or uncertain. The adaptive
control does not need prior information about the
bounds on these uncertain or time- varying
parameters.
The parameters are adjusted by using the MIT rule.

dCA Fi ( ) k -E/RT A.MIT RULE

oe
_

dx - V CAi - CA - CA
(1)
The energy balance by, A system which has one adjustable parameter
Fp Cp (Tin - T) + Vk e-E/RT cA.dH + Q
pV Cp '!:!:. (2)
dt
.'A: is considered .The closed loop response is
=

Most over damped processes can be sufficiently well

specifIed by a model whose output is Ym. The error is
approximated by a fIrst order system with a time lag 'e' between the output y of the closed loop system
and output Ym of the reference model. The variable
element as follows.
control parameter A is adapted in such a way the
G(S) = K e_LS I1+Ts
' )

(3) cost function j(A) is

Where K, T, L denotes the system gain, the time J(A) = � e2 is minimized .
2

constant and the time lag respectively. The MIT rule is:
dA D] De
= (5)
The controlled object is given by the following dt Y DA = ye DA

equation:
B.SCHEMATIC OF MRAC REFERENCE TO THE
G(s) = 0.5 e·45s /1+100s (4) PROCESS IN SIMULINK

The discrete -time model corresponding to the above

The fIgure 3 shows the model reference adaptive
equation is considered where the sampling interval is
controller with reference to our application.
Ts=1O.0[s], and the system is disturbed by Gaussian
white noise with mean and variance 0.001.
III.MODEL REFERENCE ADAPTIVE
CONTROLLER

The Model Reference Adaptive Control System

(MRAC) [16] is an adaptive servo system in which
the desired performance is expressed in terms of
reference model, which gives desired response to the
reference signal.

Fig 3. Schematic of MRAC Reference to the

Process in Simulink
The process is assumed to have a know structure,
although the parameters are unknown. The process
transfer function is given as:
G(s) = 5:5 (6)

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 2012 International Conference on Computing, Electronics and Electrical Technologies [ICCEET]

The model plant is referred by the transfer function

as: Gm(s) = 5+0.5
1
(7)
The controller is used to adjust the parameters. They
exists different set of controller parameters for which
the controller task can be achieved. The control law
is usually linear in terms of the adjustable
parameters.
C.ADAPTAnON UNIT

The adaptation unit as shown in fig 4 adjust the

parameters of the control law. In MRAC systems the
adaptation law searches for the parameters such that
the response of the plant under adaptive control
becomes the same as that of the reference model. The
adaptation mechanism is designed to guarantee the
stability of the system and convergence of the
tracking error to zero.
Fig 5 Display unit of MRAC
The plant response and the model response are
depicted in display 1 and the plant response, model
response along with the error tracking is shown in
the display unit 2.Fig 5 shows the simulink block of
display unit

----1I1>i U c IV.NEURAL SUPERVISORY CONTROL

Neural network [18] is a kind of intelligent
----1l1>i y U control methodology. This methodology is strictly
based on the heuristic type algorithm. Hence neural
----1l1oly network have the capabilities to adapt themselves to
new environments and conditions. Like wise to
----1l>! y
make the system quite adaptable to new conditions,
familiarizing the network to specific standard
ADAPTAT I ON UN I T conditions is necessary which is usually termed as
Fig 4.Block of Adaptation Unit training .This training ensures appreciable responses
D.DISPLAY UNIT of the system to non-familiar situations, noise with
different characteristics, in this case.
In the display unit we have the plant response,
model response and the error. Initially the error can
be found out .Once the system gets adjusted by the
adaptable mechanism the error get tracked and
reduced.

--- -.J IEirror

0 1 S P LAY UNI T

Fig 6 Schematic of ANN MARC

The appropriate neural network is supposed to
simple one, ideal for non-deterministic data and more
reliable with an error feedback. The choices include
feed forward back propagation neural network,

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 2012 International Conference on Computing, Electronics and Electrical Technologies [ICCEET]

Hopfield neural network, SOM neural network etc.

but the neural network with back propagation
dominates over other s and is best suited for the
specific requirements discussed. The algorithm
meant to make the system adaptable to new
conditions is usually named as training algorithm and
,
which is preceding the discussion. 1 '

Fig 8 Response of Model Reference Adaptive

Controller
The response of the model of MRAC is depicted in
Fig.9.With the help ofcontroller the system get adapt
to the model as the time varies

Fig 7 Schematic of NN with noise factor Reference

to the Process in Simulink
A. RESPONSE OF MODEL REFERENCE
ADAPTIVE CONTROLLER
"

The model reference adaptive system

was originally proposed to solve a problem in which
Fig 9 Model Response of Model Reference
the performance specifications are given in terms of
Adaptive Controller
reference model .This model tells how the output
The response of Plant of MRAC is depicted in
ideally should respond to the command signal.
Fig.10. Initially the plant response and model
The model reference adaptive system is
response are not identical as there may be error.
used to control the level of crude oil in the tank. The
level of crude oil the tank is to maintain in a
particular level to optimize the refming process. By
adjusting the gain the error is minimized.
The response of MRAC is given in
Fig8.Intially there is a large error between the plant
output and the model output. As the time moves on
the system get adapt to the reference model and the
�,o.
'
�
error decreases.

Fig 10 Plant Response of Model Reference

Adaptive Controller
The error variation of the MRAC is shown in Fig
.11.1ntially there is large error . Later when the
system automatically adapts to the reference model.
The error reduces.

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 2012 International Conference on Computing, Electronics and Electrical Technologies [ICCEET]

. 02
i
, 0

l--
••• - -+-- �e-- - -+-- �f__- _+_- ___!
.< .

Fig 13 Neural Network Trained to 50 Samples

Fig 11 Error Response of Model Reference Adaptive

Controller
The controller output of the Model Reference
Adaptive Controller is depicted in Fig.12

Fig 14 Neural Network Trained to 500 Samples

Fig 12 Controller Response of Model Reference

Adaptive Controller "'�.--+---+--�-�----
.•.

The MRAC fails to track the noise or external
disturbances that may affect the process on the later
stages as well during real time applications. To
minimize those errors and to have better control over
the system we introduce artificial neural network
based on model reference adaptive controller.
B.APPROACH TO MINIMIZE ERROR IN
NEURAL NETWORK
To make the system immune to possible noise
conditions, familiarizing the system to specific
standard conditions is worthy. The reliability,
accuracy, finally the entire performance itself
improves when the number of standard noise
samples known to the system increases. When only
50 samples the error is reduced. Again when the
neural network is trained with 500 samples the error
reduces. The above points are brought out through a
comparative study among the responses shown in fig
13,14 and 15
Fig 15 Neural Network Trained to 5000Samples
V.ANALYSIS OF NEURAL NETWORK
The Neural Network identified for the proposed
control strategy is Feed Forward with back
propagation. The training of the Neural Network has
been done with a sufficiently large dataset which is
necessary for ensuring the effectiveness of the
Neural Network.
Fig.16 shows the response of neural network
scheme adapted with gain variation. Initially large
amount of noise will be incorporated to the system as
the neural system start to initialize its tracks all the
error, it can even track and reduce all the error that
may occur during the whole process.

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 2012 International Conference on Computing, Electronics and Electrical Technologies [ICCEET]

10 1 .1 I
1 '1 I

� - - - - - - - - - =

Fig 16 Response of Neural Network Fig 19 Error Response of Neural Network

The model response of the neural network is
depicted in fig 17 . A.ANALYSIS OF NEURAL NETWORK WITH
OUTPUT VARIA nON
The neural based system is now
analyzed with output variation. Large external
disturbances are given to the system and are tested.
Fig 20 depicts the response of neural network
with output variations

Fig 17 Model Response of Neural Network

The plant response of the neural network is depicted

in fig 18. Initially the system contain large
disturbances.
Fig 20 Response of Neural Network with Output
Variation
Fig 21 depicts the response of model of neural
network with output variations.

Fig 18. Plant Response of Neural Network Fig 21 Model Response of Neural Network with
The error response of the neural network is Output Variation
depicted in fig 19. Initially the system contains large
disturbances as there is variation between the plant Fig 22 depicts the response of plant of neural
and model. The systems automatically get adjusted network with output variations
and the errors get minimized.

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 2012 International Conference on Computing, Electronics and Electrical Technologies [ICCEET]

the compensator as well the command to the system

so as to result in an optimized output. The demerit of
PID and MRAC for the CSTR process is analyzed.
The Artificial Neural Network has been applied to
the task of identification of nonlinear systems. The
validity of the scheme is validated through
simulation. The Neural Network algorithm used in
this work is feed forward with back propagation. The
strategy has been simulated using SIMULINK for a
CSTR process modeled as First Order Lag Plus
Delay Process.
Fig 22 Plant Response of Neural Network with REFERENCES
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