Closed loop identification in a four coupled

tanks system
Edilberto. H. Vsquez Daz and Martn A. Capcha Presentacin

Abstract In this paper a new method to achieve identification
of a process in closed loop operation is introduced. The process in
this case is a MIMO system of four coupled tanks. First, this non-
linear system is identified around an operating point in open loop
operation. Then, two PI controllers are designed to control the
level of liquid in two of the tanks. Finally, the process is identified
in closed loop operation using the references of the levels, the
control efforts and the process outputs, and this model is
compared whit the one found in the open loop test.
Index Termsclosed loop identification, multivariable
systems, subspace methods.
I. INTRODUCTION
.
b) With the model found in the previous step and with the
same reference signal, a new control signal and
process output are estimated but now they are
without the influence of perturbations
c) Finally, with the estimated signals and the
model process is estimated as in open loop operation.
III. PROCESS DESCRIPTION [2]
The process consists of four coupled tanks and it works like
this: the water is pumped by two DC water pumps from the
reservoir to the tanks in the configuration that is showed in the
Fig. 2 and Fig. 3. Water pump number 1 brings water to tanks
1, 2 and 3, and water pump number 2 brings water to tanks 1,

I N THE INDUSTRY is normal to find processes operating

under a controller that regulates their operation for reasons
such as security, productivity and economy. Due to this, there
3 and 4. Tanks 1 and 3 are connected by a tube, where the
water can flow in both directions.
The system also has six manipulable valves (MV-A, MV-B,
is a necessity to find techniques that can identify the process MV-C, MV-D, MV-E and MV-F) that can change the entire
dynamics from the data in closed loop operation. system behavior. The levels of water in each tank are
Identification of processes in open loop operation measured with pressure sensors and the water pumps are
decoupling the controller could originate issues such as controlled with DC power drivers.
instabilities and operation out of the permitted range of work,
and these techniques are not allowed in closed loop systems
due to the inputs of the process are correlated with the noise of
the process and of the measurements.
In this paper, a method based in subspaces is introduced,
called IdCL [1], to identify processes that are in closed loop
operation. This method has the advantage that does not need to
know the controller used in the process. (a)

II. CLOSED LOOP IDENTIFICATION METHOD: IDCL

This algorithm considerate a closed loop system as a system
with one input (the reference signal) and two outputs (the
control signal and the process output) and it is developed in
three steps that are shown in Fig. 1: (b)
a) The closed loop system is identified as a MIMO system,
using the PI-MOESP algorithm, to have a model of the
system without perturbations. The input of this step is the
closed loop system reference and the output signals
are the control signal and the process output (c)

Fig. 1. Steps of the IdCL method for closed loop identification

Edilberto H. Vsquez Daz is with the Mechanical-Electrical Eng. Dept.,
Piura University, Piura, Per. (e-mail: edilberto.vasquez@udep.pe).
Martn A. Capcha is with Lab. Of Autom. Control Systems, Piura
University, Piura, Per. (e-mail: martin.capcha@posgrado.udep.edu.pe).
Copyrigth: 9781509011476/16/$31.002016IEEE.
 TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF THE OPERATING POINT [2]

Parameter Magnitude Units

1 21.5 V
2 22 V
MV-A 10 %
MV-B 0 %
MV-C 100 %
MV-D 15 %
MV-E 0 %
MV-F 100 %
19.3 cm.
38.3 cm.
13.7 cm.
22.2 cm.

a fit of 76.66% as is shown in Fig. 5.

The system state-space representation is:
= + (1)
= + (2)
Where:
Fig. 2. System of four coupled tanks [2]

= (3)



= (4)

206 26 5 6
= 234 190 8 11 10 (5)
18 11 230 28
1 1 261 214
10 1171
= 189 59 10 (6)
1014 36
17 119

Fig. 3. Schematic of the system of four coupled tanks [2]

IV. OPEN LOOP SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION

The operating point for the open loop system identification (a)
is determined by the values shown in the Table I. 1 and 2
are the input voltages of the pumps. Parameters MV-A to MV-
F indicate the opening percentage of the manual valves, and
, , , indicate the levels of water in stationary state.
The input voltages for the system identification are shown
in Fig. 4(a), which are RBS signals around the voltages 21.5 V
and 22 V with a variation of +/-2 V. In Fig. 4(b) are shown the
levels of each tank affected by the RBS input signals.
Using the System Identification Tool toolbox from the (b)
MATLAB software, the system is identified. With the input Fig. 4. (a) RBS input (volts) signals and (b) Outputs (levels) of the system
and output data and the identification technique N4SID, it is for open loop identification [2]
obtained a model in continuous state-space representation with
 42 25

41 24

40 23

39 22
h2 h4
38 Ref h2 21 Ref h4

37 20
600 800 1000 1200 600 800 1000 1200

23
Control effort U1 22.8 Control effort U2
22.2

22 22.6

22.4
21.8
22.2
21.6
22
21.4
600 800 1000 1200 600 800 1000 1200
Fig. 5. Open loop identification using System Identification Tool toolbox
from MATLAB [2] Fig. 7. Response of the closed loop system with the PI controllers to changes
As the levels that are going to be controlled are and , in the references
and does not directly affect these outputs, then: After having the reference, control and output signals,
shown in Fig. 9, the algorithm also needs the order of the
= (7)
closed loop operation and the order of the process. Both can
be estimated from the original data. Once applied the
0 1 0 0
= (8) algorithm, the matrixes of the state-space representation of the
0 0 0 1
process are:
0 0 57 3 177 3
= (9)
0 0 1 94 12 165
= 10 (12)
145 17 348 16
V. PI CONTROL SIMULATION [2] 2 144 25 342
Knowing the model of the system around the operating point 33 121
designated, two PI controllers were designed and implemented 121 35 10
as in the Fig. 6. The PI transfer functions are: = (13)
35 175
= 0.441 1 + (10) 207 16
.
3.36 0.3 2.72 0.19
= (14)
= 0.343 1 + (11) 0.25 3.44 0.355 1.98
.
0 0
In Fig. 7 is shown the behavior of the process when the = (15)
0 0
setpoints are changed to 40.3 cm. and 24.2 cm. in and
respectively. VII. COMPARISON OF THE MODELS AND
CONCLUSIONS
VI. CLOSED LOOP IDENTIFICATION
First, the eigenvalues of and are compared:
Similarly to the open loop identification, the closed loop 0.0193 + 0.008
identification is going to use RBS signals in the references
signals for both levels. Also, to demonstrate the robustness of = 0.0193 0.008 (16)
0.0227 + 0.0086
the method, white noise with variance equal to 1 is added to 0.0227 0.0086
the output values that will be used for the identification. The
implementation of this identification can be seen in Fig. 8.

Fig. 6. Implementation of the PI controllers Fig. 8. Closed loop system operation with noise added at the output
 [2] P. Gutarra, Modelacin y control de un sistema de cuatro tanques
41 25
acoplados, M. S. Thesis, Lab. de Sist. Automticos de Control, Univ.
h2 h4
40 24 de Piura, 2016.
Ref h2 Ref h4
39 23 [3] P. V. Overschee and B. de Moor. (1995, December). A unifying theorem
for three subspace system identification. Automatica. [Online]. 31(12)
38 22
pp. 1853-1864. Available:
37 21 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0005109895000720
36 20 [4] P. V. Overschee, B. de Moor and W. Favoreel. (1997, September).
8000 8500 9000 9500 10000 8000 8500 9000 9500 10000 Numerical algorithms for subspace state system identification (N4SID).
Presented at ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences.
22.5 24 [5] M. Verhaegen. (1993, September). Subspace model identification. Part
Control effort U1 Control effort U2 III. Analysis of the ordinary output-error state-space model identification
22 23 algorithm. Int. J. of Control. 21(3), pp. 556-586.
21.5
22
21
21
Edilberto H. Vsquez received the B. S.
20.5 degree in mechanical electrical
8000 8500 9000 9500 10000 8000 8500 9000 9500 10000
engineering from Piura University, Piura,
Fig. 9. Reference, control and output signals for the closed loop in 1990 and the M. S. and Ph.D. degrees
identification in industrial control systems from
Valladolid University, Valladolid in 2005.
42 25 Since 1990, he is a professor with the
41 24
Mechanical-Electrical Engineering
Department, Piura University, Piura. His
40 23
research interests include automation and industrial control,
39 22
h2 h4 system modeling, identification and simulation.
38 Ref h2 21 Ref h4

37
600 800 1000 1200
20
600 800 1000 1200
Martn A. Capcha was born in Lima,
Per in 1991. He received the B. S. degree
23
in electronic engineering from National
22.2
Control effort U1 22.8 Control effort U2 University of Engineering, Lima, in 2014.
22.6 He is currently pursuing the M. S. degree
22
22.4 in mechanical electrical engineering from
21.8
22.2 Piura University, Piura since 2015.
21.6 22 Since 2016, he has been a Research
21.4 Assistant with the Laboratory of
600 800 1000 1200 600 800 1000 1200
Automatic Control Systems in Piura University, Piura. His
Fig. 10. Response of the closed loop system using the estimated space state research interests includes system identification, model
representation of the system predictive control strategies, power electronics, power
converters and embedded systems.

0.0201 + 0.0074
= 0.0201 0.0074 (17)
0.0220 + 0.0086
0.0220 0.0086
Both matrixes of eigenvalues are very similar. Remember
that the data for closed loop identification includes white noise
with variance equal to 1.
In Fig. 10 is shown the behavior of the system in closed loop
operation but now using the matrixes , , , . It shows
that, due to the good approximation in the estimation of the
real process, the behavior is almost the same than in Fig. 7.
With these comparisons, it is demonstrated the robustness
and good performance of the method IdCL to identify
processes even when they are under closed loop operation.

REFERENCES
[1] E. H. Vsquez Daz, Identificacin de procesos en lazo cerrado con
subespacios, PhD. Dissertation, Univ. de Valladolid, Valladolid, 2004.