Control Engineering Practice 7 (1999) 821}830

Optimal-tuning PID controller design in the frequency domain with

application to a rotary hydraulic system
G.P. Liu*, S. Daley
Energy Technology Centre, ALSTOM, Cambridge Road, Leicester LE8 6LH, UK
Received 13 November 1998; accepted 25 March 1999

Abstract

In this paper a new PID controller design scheme that uses optimisation in the frequency domain is proposed for industrial process
control. An optimal-tuning PID controller is designed to satisfy a set of frequency-domain performance requirements: gain margin,
phase margin, crossover frequency and steady-state error. Using an estimated process frequency response, the method can provide
optimal PID parameters even in cases where the process dynamics are time variant. This scheme is demonstrated through its
application to a rotary hydraulic system and its performance is compared with six alternative PID tuning rules.  1999 Elsevier
Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Optimal-tuning control; PID controller; Frequency-domain; Hydraulic system

1. Introduction & Mellichamp, 1989), no-overshoot rule (Seborg et al.,

The proportional, integral and derivative (PID) con-
trol algorithm remains the most popular approach for
industrial process control despite continual advances in
control theory. This is not only due to the simple struc-
ture, which is conceptually easy to understand and,
which makes manual tuning possible, but also to the
fact that the algorithm provides adequate performance
in the vast majority of applications. However, for a var-
iety of reasons optimal setting of the gains is di$cult
and as a result many PID design techniques have
been developed in the literature (see, for example,
Astrom & Hagglund, 1984; Zhuang & Atherton, 1993;
Daley & Liu, 1998; Liu, Dixon & Daley, 1998;
McCormack & Godfrey, 1998).
Most of the PID tuning rules developed in the last 50
years use frequency-response methods. Examples in-
clude, Ziegler}Nichols rule (Ziegler & Nichols, 1942),
symmetric optimum rule (Kessler, 1958; Voda & Landou,
1995), Ziegler}Nichols' complementary rule (Mantz
& Tacconi, 1989), some-overshoot rule (Seborg, Edgar
* Corresponding author. Tel.: #44-116-201-5531; fax: #44-116-
2015464.
E-mail address: guoping.liu@energy.alstom.com (G.P. Liu)
1989), re"ned Ziegler}Nicholes rule (Hang, Astrom
& Ho, 1991), integral of squared time weighted error rule
(Zhuang & Atherton, 1993), and integral of absolute
error rule (Pessen, 1994). These methods are straightfor-
ward to apply since they provide simple tuning formulae
to determine the PID controller parameters. However,
since only a small amount of information on the dynamic
behaviour of the process is used, in many situations they
do not provide good enough tuning or produce a satis-
factory closed-loop response. For example, in practice,
the Ziegler}Nichols rule often leads to a rather oscilla-
tory response to setpoint changes.
In an e!ort to improve the performance of PID tuning
for processes with changing dynamic properties, several
automatic tuning and adaptive strategies have been pro-
posed (Kraus & Mayron, 1984; Astrom & Hagglund,
1984; Radke & Issermann, 1987). These controllers have
self-initialisation and recalibration features to cope with
little a priori knowledge and signi"cant changes in the
process dynamics, based on the automatic measurement
of the ultimate gain and period. Various techniques, such
as relay excitation feedback (Astrom & Hagglund, 1984)
and rule-based autotuning (McCormack & Godfrey,
1998), have been developed. However, the PID controller
parameters are still computed using the classic tuning
formulae and, as noted above, these do not provide good
control performance in all situations.

0967-0661/99/$ - see front matter  1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 6 7 - 0 6 6 1 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 4 7 - 7
822 G.P. Liu, S. Daley / Control Engineering Practice 7 (1999) 821}830

In order to address this problem a PID controller
design based on direct optimisation in the frequency-
domain is developed in this paper. A set of frequency-
domain performance functions are considered, which are
the gain-margin, phase-margin, crossover-frequency and
steady-state error. The PID controller is then designed to
directly satisfy the requirements set for these functions.
Using a non-parametric model represented by the system
frequency response, a method is derived that can pro-
vide optimal PID parameters for di!erent working con-
ditions. This controller is demonstrated through its
application to a rotary hydraulic system and its perfor-
mance evaluated through comparison with six other PID
tuning rules.
& Landou, 1995). A summary of the six PID tuning rules
are given in Table 1.
In Table 1, K and ¹ are the inverse of the system gain
S S
and frequency at which the phase is !1803. K and

u correspond to the gain of the system and frequency

at which the system phase is !1353. B3[1, 2] is an
acceleration factor. It can be seen from the table that the
six PID design methods do not require a parametric
transfer function model of the process and only need
either one or two frequency response measurements of
the process.
3. Optimal-tuning PID control

The design of feedback control systems in industry

2. Rule-based PID controller design
A large number of industrial processes can be charac-
terised by a "rst-order plant with dead time (FOPDT).
The transfer function of a FOPDT model is described by
using frequency-response methods is more popular than
any other. This is primarily because the frequency re-
sponse method provides good designs in the face of
uncertainty in the plant model and can easily use experi-
mental information for design purposes.

K e\QO
G(s)" N , (1) 3.1. Frequency response estimation
1#s¹
To estimate the system frequency response, the design
where K is the gain, ¹ the time constant and q the dead
N of the excitation signal is very important. The excitation
time. It is assumed that the ideal transfer function of
signal utilised here is the commonly used multi-sine
a PID controller is given by
which has the following form:


1 ,
K(s)"K 1# #¹ s , (2) x(t)" A sin(2n f t#u ) ,
A ¹ s B I G I
(3)
G
I
where K , ¹ and ¹ are the PID parameters. where A , u and f are the amplitude, phase and fre-
A G B I I I
Based on the FOPDT model, there are a number of quency of the signal components. The phase chosen after
PID tuning formula available. Six PID tuning rules are the desired power distribution is determined has an im-
introduced and assessed in later sections. These tuning portant in#uence on the time-domain signal shape. For
rules are Ziegler}Nichols (NZ) (Ziegler & Nichols, 1942), example, the maximal peak can be signi"cantly com-
integral of absolute error (IAE) (Pessen, 1994), some- pressed, enabling greater energy to be injected for the
overshoot rule (SOR) (Seborg et al., 1989), no-overshoot given input range of the measurement device, and the
rule (NOR) (Seborg et al., 1989), integral of squared time system is kept in the linear working region.
weighted error (ISTWE) (Zhuang & Atherton, 1993), During the identi"cation, the closed-loop system with
symmetric optimum rule (SO) (Kessler, 1958; Voda the PID controller is assumed to be of the structure
shown in Fig. 1. The multi-sine signal is added to the
Table 1 reference r(t). For this system, the unbiased estimate of
Six PID tuning rules the frequency-response of the process using spectral anal-
ysis is given by (Wellstand, 1981; McCormack & God-
PID rule PID parameters
frey, 1998)
Ziegler}Nichols K "0.60K , ¹ "0.5¹ , ¹ "0.125¹
A S G S B S PK ( ju)
Integral of absolute K "0.70K , ¹ "0.4¹ , ¹ "0.150¹
A S G S B S
GK ( ju)" WP , (4)
PK ( ju)
error SP
Some-overshoot rule K "0.33K , ¹ "0.5¹ , ¹ "0.330¹
A S G S B S
No-overshoot rule K "0.20K , ¹ "0.5¹ , ¹ "0.330¹
A S G S B S
Integral of squared K "0.509K , ¹ "0.051(3.302K K #1)¹
A S G N S S
time weighted error
n ¹ "0.125¹
B S
Symmetric optimum 4#B B 4#B B
K" , ¹" , ¹"
A 8(2 K G Bu B (4#B)u
  
Fig. 1. Standard PID control system.
 G.P. Liu, S. Daley / Control Engineering Practice 7 (1999) 821}830 823

where closed-loop system. This relationship is very useful in the

design of suitable compensation.
1 K After the above considerations, it is assumed that
PK ( ju)" RH( ju)> ( ju), (5)
WP m G G the major requirements in the frequency domain are
G
those on the gain-margin, the phase-margin, the crossover-
1 K
PK ( ju)" RH( ju); ( ju) (6) frequency and the steady-state error. Thus, the follow-
SP m G G
G ing performance functions need to be considered during
with R ( ju), ; ( ju) and > ( ju) representing the the design of a PID controller:
G G G
Fourier coe$cients of the reference input, the control


"K( ju)G( ju)"
input and the output, respectively. If the averaging of
(K , ¹ , ¹ )" ,
 A G B G
every quantity is done in a recursive way, then, for +
k"1, 2,2
PK I( ju)
GK ( ju)" WP , (7)
LK( ju)G( ju)"!1803 ,
 (10)

PK I( ju)
SP

180#LK( ju)G( ju)

(K , ¹ , ¹ )" 2! ,
where  A G B P
+
k!1 1
PK I( ju)"
WP k
PK I\( ju)# RH( ju)> ( ju),
WP k I I
(8) "K( ju)G( ju)""1 ,
 (11)

k!1 1

 
PK I( ju)" PK I\( ju)# RH( ju); ( ju) (9) u
SP k SP k I I
(K , ¹ , ¹ )" , "K( ju) G( ju)""1 , (12)
 A G B 2n f
B
with PK ( ju)"0 and PK ( ju)"0. For the open-loop
WP SP
 
identi"cation case, the multi-sine signal is directly added 1

(K , ¹ , ¹ )" , u"1 , (13)
to the control input of the process. The estimation of the  A G B e "K( ju)G( ju)"
QQ
frequency response of the process is still the same as the
above with R ( ju)"1, ∀k. Generally speaking, the accu- where
(K , ¹ , ¹ ), for i"1, 2, 3, 4, are the normalised
I G A G B
racy of the open-loop estimation is better than the gain-margin, phase-margin, crossover-frequency and the
closed-loop case. But, in practice, the latter is more con- steady-state error functions with the desired values
G , P , f and e , respectively. Thus, the following
venient for implementation than the former. + + B QQ
performance criteria should be satis"ed:
3.2. Optimal PID controller design
(K , ¹ , ¹ ))1, i"1, 2, 3, 4. (14)
G A G B
Although the six PID design methods give simple If the above inequalities are met, then the problem is
tuning rules for the controller parameters using either solved. Clearly, the design problem is to "nd a PID
one or two measurement points of the system frequency controller to make Eq. (14) hold. There are a number of
response, their control performance may not satisfy the methods to solve the performance criteria problem (14).
desired requirements. To overcome this disadvantage, an Here, two methods are brie#y introduced: the minimax
optimal PID controller design is proposed in the fre- optimisation method and the method of inequalities.
quency domain. Using the minimax optimisation method (Gill, Murray
In the frequency domain, there are two quantities used & Wright, 1981), the performance criteria (14) can be
to measure the stability margin of the system. One is the satis"ed if
gain margin, which is the factor by which the gain is less
than the neutral stability value. The other is the phase min max +
(K , ¹ , ¹ ),)1. (15)
G A G B
margin, which is the amount by which the phase of the )A 2G 2B G   
system exceeds !1803 when the system gain is unity. Clearly, the above minimises the worst case values of the
The gain and phase margins are also related to the performance functions.
damping of a system. In addition to the stability of The method of inequalities (Zakian & Al-Naib, 1973;
a design, the system is also expected to meet a speed-of- Liu, 1992; Whidborne & Liu, 1993) uses optimisation
response speci"cation like bandwidth. The crossover fre- algorithms (e.g., moving boundaries algorithm) to "nd
quency, which is the frequency at which the gain is unity, the admissible or feasible set of parameter vectors, for
would be a good measurement in the frequency domain which all the performance inequalities hold. The admiss-
for the system's speed of time response. Also, the larger ible set is de"ned as
the value of the magnitude on the low-frequency asym-
ptote, the lower the steady-state errors will be for the X"X 5X 5X 5X , (16)
   
824 G.P. Liu, S. Daley / Control Engineering Practice 7 (1999) 821}830
where X is the set of parameter vectors for which the ith
G
functional inequality is satis"ed, that is
X "+(K , ¹ , ¹ ),
(K , ¹ , ¹ ))1,. (17)
G A G B G A G B
Similar algorithms for solving the problem de"ned in (14)
now exist in standard libraries of optimisation software,
for example, the optimisation toolbox for use with MAT-
LAB (Grace, 1994).
3.3. Optimal-tuning PID control scheme
When a system has di!erent operating points with
widely di!ering dynamic properties, it is not always pos-
sible to exercise control with a "xed parameter control-
ler, even if this is a highly robust controller. For this case,
the optimal-tuning PID control scheme shown in Fig. 2
is proposed. It mainly consists of four parts: frequency
response estimation, desired system speci"cations,
optimal-tuning mechanism and PID controller. The fre-
quency response estimated using frequency-domain iden-
ti"cation methods provides a non-parametric model for
the process. The desired system speci"cations includes
a set of requirements in the frequency domain: gain
margin, phase margin, crossover frequency and steady-
state error. The optimal-tuning mechanism uses the pro-
cess frequency response to "nd optimal parameters for
the PID controller so that the desired system speci"ca-
tions are satis"ed.
Fig. 2. Optimal-tuning PID control structure.
Fig. 3. Schematic of hydraulic rig.
The operating procedure of the optimal-tuning PID
control is as follows. When the system's operating-point
or dynamics change, the new process frequency response
is re-estimated by switching on the excitation signal.
Then, using this updated frequency-response, the tuning
mechanism searches for the optimal parameters for the
PID controller to satisfy the desired system speci"ca-
tions. Finally, the PID controller is set to the obtained
optimal parameters. In this way, the PID controller may
cope with all operating-points of the system and the
closed-loop system will have similar optimal-control
performance. But, compared with a "xed parameter con-
trol, the disadvantage of this strategy is that it needs
slightly more computation to search for the optimal
parameters.
4. Application to a rotary hydraulic system
The optimal-tuning PID control scheme is applied to
a rotary hydraulic test rig (Daley, 1987), which is repre-
sentative of many industrial systems that utilise #uid
power. This is a particularly opposite application of the
method since hydraulic systems are often very conserva-
tively tuned, due to the fact that the cost of getting the
tuning wrong can be highly destructive and costly. To
e!ectively assess the performance of the proposed tuning
method the other six tuning rules which were introduced
in Section 2 are also applied to the rig.
4.1. Rotary hydraulic system
The rotary hydraulic test rig, as shown in Fig. 3,
comprises an electro-hydraulic servo control valve driv-
ing a "xed displacement hydraulic motor up to 8000 rpm
with a maximum operating pressure of 21 MPa. The
motor is coupled by a rigid shaft to a hydraulic pump of
the same displacement as the motor and a solenoid
controlled relief valve is used to simulate variations in
load.
 G.P. Liu, S. Daley / Control Engineering Practice 7 (1999) 821}830 825

Fig. 4. Implementation of the optimal-tuning PID control of the hydraulic rig.

This type of hydraulic system is typically applied to

mixer drives, centrifuge drives and machine tool
drives where accurate speed control with fast response
times is required, and large changes in load can be
expected.

4.2. Implementation structure

The optimal-tuning PID control scheme is imple-

mented using the MathWorks Real-Time Workshop
connected to a dSPACE DSP board based around the
Fig. 5. Multisine excitation signal.
TMS320, MATLAB and SIMULINK. With this system
a powerful implementation strategy is possible, as shown
in Fig. 4. It mainly comprises an external control loop
and an internal control loop. The external control loop be prevented through a slight increase in computational
includes the hydraulic system and a PID controller. The load.
internal control loop includes the adaptive model up-
dated by an on-line system identi"cation algorithm and
4.3. Experimental results
a PID controller.
The parameters of the two PID controllers are ad-
During the experiment, the rotary hydraulic system
justed by the optimal-tuning PID algorithm. Roughly
was operated in two working conditions: with load and
speaking, the implementation of PID control strategies
without load. So, the experimental results for the two
consists of two stages. The "rst stage is to run a
cases are presented.
PID controller on the identi"ed on-line model to predict
the performance of the PID controller before it is used
on the rig. The second stage is to apply the PID control- 4.3.1. Case I: with load
ler to the rotary hydraulic system using the PID For the sake of simplicity, a periodic multi-sine excita-
parameters that have been veri"ed as being safe on tion signal, as shown in Fig. 5, was directly applied to the
the adaptive model. In this way, any unnecessary hydraulic system in an open-loop way. Based on the
damage resulting from the wrong PID parameters can input}output data, the frequency response of the system
826 G.P. Liu, S. Daley / Control Engineering Practice 7 (1999) 821}830

Fig. 6. Frequency-response of the hydraulic motor with load.

Table 2 and integral of absolute error rules. The speed responses

PID parameters for case I using the other four PID control rules are given in Fig. 9.
Note that the symmetric optimum rule and the some-
PID rule K ¹ ¹
A G B overshoot rule give a signi"cant oscillatory response.
Ziegler}Nichols 0.1662 0.0606 0.0152 Though the no-overshoot rule and the optimal design
Integral of squared time 0.1410 0.0423 0.0152 rule do not give a speed response as good as the optimal
weighted error design rule for Case I, their performance is reasonably
Integral of absolute error 0.1939 0.0485 0.0182 good and for some practical cases may be considered
Symmetric optimum 0.1268 0.1141 0.0065
Some-overshoot rule 0.0914 0.0606 0.0400 acceptable.
No-overshoot rule 0.0554 0.0606 0.0400 Since the process dynamics have changed signi"cantly
Optimal design rule 0.0632 0.0372 0.0351 a more appropriate response would be to re-tune. The
periodic multi-sine excitation signal, as shown in Fig. 5,
was directly applied to the hydraulic system again. The
estimated frequency response of the load-free case is
shown in Fig. 10. Comparing Fig. 10 with Fig. 6, it is
was estimated using the frequency-domain identi"cation clear that the system frequency responses for these two
methods discussed in Section 3. The estimated magnitude cases are di!erent, with the loading change being seen
and phase of the system with respect to frequency are mainly as an apparent gain change. In terms of the seven
shown in Fig. 6. PID tuning rules, the parameters of the PID controllers
Following the six PID tuning rules in Section 2 and the for this case are given in Table 3.
optimal PID design rule proposed in this paper provides The performance of the seven PID controllers for this
the parameters which are given in Table 2. The speed case are shown in Figs. 11 and 12. It is clear that the
responses of the hydraulic motor using seven PID relative performance is similar to that displayed for
controllers are shown in Figs. 7 and 8. Case I.

4.3.2. Case II: without load

In this case, there was no load on the hydraulic motor.
This means the process dynamics are di!erent. When the
PID parameters for Case I were still used, three PID
controllers failed to stabilise the system, namely the
Ziegler}Nichols, integral of squared time weighted error
5. Conclusions
In this paper an optimal PID controller design scheme
based in the frequency domain has been presented. The
scheme mainly consists of four parts: frequency-response
 G.P. Liu, S. Daley / Control Engineering Practice 7 (1999) 821}830 827

Fig. 7. The speed of the hydraulic motor using NZ, ISTWE, IAE and SO controllers (Case I).

Fig. 8. The speed of the hydraulic motor using SOR, NOR and ODR controllers (Case I).

estimation, a de"nition of desired system speci"cations, domain identi"cation methods provides a non-paramet-
an optimal-tuning mechanism and a PID controller. ric model for the process. The desired system speci"ca-
The frequency response estimated using frequency- tions includes a set of requirements in the frequency
828 G.P. Liu, S. Daley / Control Engineering Practice 7 (1999) 821}830

Fig. 9. The speed of the hydraulic motor without load using SOR, NOR, SO and ODR controllers for Case I.

Fig. 10. Frequency response of the hydraulic motor without load.

Table 3 domain: gain-margin, phase-margin, crossover-frequency

PID parameters for case II and steady-state error. The optimal-tuning mechanism
PID rule K ¹ ¹ uses the process frequency response to "nd optimal para-
A G B meters for the PID controller so that the desired system
Ziegler}Nichols 0.1012 0.0549 0.0137 speci"cations are satis"ed. This scheme has been success-
Integral of squared time 0.0858 0.0330 0.0137 fully applied to a rotary hydraulic system and has also
weighted error
Integral of absolute error 0.1180 0.0439 0.0165 been compared with another six auto-tuning PID con-
Symmetric optimum 0.0844 0.0994 0.0056 trol rules. The experimental results have shown that this
Some-overshoot rule 0.0556 0.0549 0.0362 optimal-tuning PID controller can signi"cantly improve
No-overshoot rule 0.0337 0.0549 0.0362 system performance, and copes well with changes in the
Optimal design rule 0.0317 0.0262 0.0385 process dynamics.
 G.P. Liu, S. Daley / Control Engineering Practice 7 (1999) 821}830 829

Fig. 11. The speed of the hydraulic motor using NZ, ISTWE, IAE and SO controllers (Case II).

Fig. 12. The speed of the hydraulic motor using SOR, NOR and ODR controllers (Case II).

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