UNIT – 2

ANALOG and DIGITAL

LECTURE – 6:
ON-OFF CONTROL SYSTEM
 Meaning of ON-OFF Controllers
• An ON-OFF controller simply drives the manipulated
variable from fully closed to fully open depending on
the position of the controlled variable relative to the
setpoint.
– In an industrial plant, a closed-loop control system has
the role of keeping a measured physical signal to a
predefined value (setpoint).
• The physical signal (controlled variable), can be;
– Electrical (voltage, current, power),
– Mechanical (position, speed, force, torque),
– Hydraulic (pressure, flow) or
– Thermal (temperature).
• The error is the difference between the
controlled variable (measured) and the
predefined value (setpoint).
• The input of the controller is the error and
the controller output is an actuation signal which
is sent to an actuator.
• The controlled variable is further measured with
a sensor and the information is feed back to the
controller.
• The difference between the setpoint and the
plant output (measured) occurs because of
the disturbances which affect the plant (process).
• The role of the controller is to reject these
disturbances and keep the plant output
(controlled variable) to the predefined value
(setpoint).
• The ways in which the controller reacts to the
error are called control laws or control modes.
 Control Laws Used in Industrial
Applications
• In industrial applications there are several control
laws used;
– ON-OFF control,
– PID control or other
– More advanced laws;
• Fuzzy,
• Neuro-fuzzy,
• Optimal, etc.
Characteristics of ON-OFF Controllers
• The ON-OFF control is the simplest form of a
controller, which switches ON when the error is
positive and switches OFF when the error is zero or
negative.
• An on-off controller doesn’t have intermediate states
but only fully ON or fully OFF states.
• Due to the switching logic, an on-off controller is
often called a bang-bang controller or a two-step
controller.
• Regardless of the size of the error, the output of the
ON-OFF controller can only be fully ON or fully OFF, it
is not proportional with the error.
• When the error is positive, the controller is
switched ON.
• When the error is zero or negative, the
controller output is set to OFF.
 Example 1; Temperature Control of an
Industrial Oven.
• The temperature inside the oven is measured with
a sensor and feed back to the controller.
• Based on the error (difference between setpoint
temperature and measured temperature), the
heating elements are turned ON or OFF by the
controller.
• There are no intermediate values of the heating
element; they are fully ON or fully OFF.
• If we compare this system with the generic closed-loop
system explained above, we can identify the following
elements:
– Controller: switch
– Plant: oven
– Feedback (measured output): temperature
• The industrial oven has two important characteristics
which need to be explained, because they affect the
response of the controller:
– Dead time
– Capacitance (inertia)
• In most of the control systems with feedback loop, the
system cannot respond instantly to any disturbance and it
takes time (delay) until the controller output has any
effect on the measured (plant) output.
• The capacitance of a system is seen as the
resistance to changing inputs.
• The higher the capacitance of a system, the longer
the time it takes to react to changes. With the
oven cold, even if turning the heaters on, takes
time for the temperature to start increasing and
reach the nominal value.
• The advantage is that capacitance has the
tendency to filter (dampen) out the effect of
disturbances on a system.
2: Water level control
• The valve in the inflow line to the system is an
electrically operated solenoid valve.
– It has only two operating positions;
• Fully open or
• Fully closed.
• Assume that under initial conditions with a
demand on the system the level will start to fall
and V1 will have to be opened to provide an inflow.
– This can easily be achieved by mounting a differential
pressure switch, P1 at the bottom of the tank to operate
when the level falls to L1.
– When the level is at L1 the liquid will be height h1 above
switch.
• The pressure at the switch will be P1 = ρgh1.
• Where;
– ρ – Density of the liquid
g – Gravitational acceleration
h1 – Height of the liquid
• In the theory of control systems, the industrial oven is
defined as a first order process with dead time. The
transfer function of a first order process with dead time
is:
– Where:
• K – Gain
T – Time constant
τ – Dead time
• The time constant is a measure of the capacitance
of the system.
– The higher the time constant, the longer it takes for the
system to react to changing inputs or disturbances.
• If an on-off controller is set to control a first order
process with dead time, the output of the
controller and the plant (controlled variable /
temperature) will have the following behaviour.
• Let’s assume that the setpoint temperature of the
oven is 120 °C and the initial temperature is 0 °C.
The dead time of the oven is 30 s.
• When activated, the controller will sense the
temperature difference via the temperature
feedback and switch ON (1) the heating elements.
• Due to the dead time, only after 30 s, since the
heating elements have been turned on, we can
notice a rise in temperature.
– The rise in temperature is not abrupt but slow and it
takes around 300 s until the temperature reaches the
setpoint value.
– When the temperature is higher than 120°C, the
controller switches OFF (0) the heating elements.
• Since the heating elements are still hot, the
temperature will continue to rise for a short time,
followed by a decrease.
• When temperature goes below 120°C, the ON-OFF
controller switches ON the heating elements. Since
it takes time for the heating elements to reach
nominal temperature, the temperature in the oven
will still decrease for a short time, followed by an
increase.
– The ON-OFF controller cannot keep a steady
temperature in the oven but always goes above and
below the setpoint.
– This cycling around the setpoint value is called
“hunting“.
 Modeling of ON-OFF Controller
• The ON-OFF controller can be modeled in Xcos
with a Dynamic Switch, which can output 1 (ON)
or 0 (OFF) function of the sign of the temperature
error.
• The setpoint is defined as a Constant block.
– The error is calculated as the difference between the
setpoint and the current value of the temperature
(plant output).
• The ON-OFF controller is switching the output
from ON to OFF around the setpoint value. The
constant switching, with high frequency around
the setpoint, can lead to stress on the actuators
and potential failure.
• For this reason, most of the ON-OFF controllers
have an integrated hysteresis.
• The on-off controller with hysteresis will not
switch around the setpoint but between an upper
and a lower limit.
– This way, the frequency of the switching will decrease
but the variation (overshoot) around the setpoint will
increase.
ON-OFF Control with Hysteresis Output
• The error is not any more compared against zero
but against a hysteresis value.
– The higher the hysteresis value, the lower the
switching frequency and the higher the overshoot.
• For our particular example, if the oven
temperature is set to 120 °C and the hysteresis
to 20 °C, the on-off controller will switch OFF
when the temperature is higher than 130 °C and
switch ON when it is less than 110 °C.
 ON-OFF control with dead-band
•
output
Instead of a hysteresis, an
on-off controller can also
have a dead band.
• The dead band
represents the lower and
upper limits of the error
between which the
controller doesn’t react.
• In this case the controller
will have three states.
• As an application we can imagine an electric
motor which needs to position roughly a
component between some limits.
• The ON-OFF controller will rotate the motor
forward (FWD), backward (BWD) or wait (IDLE).
If the position of the component is between the
dead-band, the controller will be in IDLE state.
Main advantages and disadvantages of ON-
OFF Controllers
• The main advantages of ON-OFF controllers are:
– Simplicity,
– Inexpensive and
– Digital output (only two states).
• The main disadvantages of ON-OFF are:
– Controlled parameter will continuously switch
around the setpoint and if the hysteresis is not
correctly set, the deviation from the setpoint could
be quite significant.
 Areas were ON-OFF Controllers are used
• ON-OFF control is primarily used in non critical
applications, where the error between the setpoint and
plant output can vary with a relatively large amount.
• For example;
– Temperature control systems for houses (heating and
cooling),
– Freezers
– Electric ironing box,
• How an on-off controller works it’s important because it
lays the foundations for more complicated controllers.
• Understanding what are the disadvantages of a simple
controller, helps in the design phase of a more advanced
controller.