Comparative Study for Implementation of Various Performance Indices on the Coupled Tank Level Control System

This paper presents comparative analysis of the effect of implementing various performance indices for water level control in a coupled tank Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system. The control objective is to regulate the water levels in each tank to desired set points while maintaining stability and minimizing disturbances. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of incorporating different performance indices in the control strategy and evaluate its effectiveness in achieving desired performance of interconnected coupled tanks. Traditional control techniques may struggle to handle the inherent complexity and interactions present in such a system. To address this challenge, various performance indices are introduced to quantify the system’s performance and guide the control strategy. Integral absolute error (IAE), Integral of Time multiplied Absolute Error (ITAE), Integral of Time multiplied square error (ISTE) and Integral square error (ISE) are incorporated as the performance indices in the proposed work. The performance index takes into account various factors such as overshoot, steady-state error and settling time. By optimizing the performance index, the control strategy can be tailored to achieve the desired water level control efficiently. The analysis begins with the development of a suitable mathematical model for the coupled tank MIMO system, considering the dynamics of the tanks, interconnections, and control inputs. In addition to the experimentation on hardware, simulations are also conducted to evaluate the responses of different performance indices using particle swarm optimization based PID as a control strategy. The results of the analysis demonstrate the advantages and limitations of incorporating a particular performance index in the control strategy for water level control in a coupled tank system. The findings provide insight into the benefits and challenges of using such an approach and suggest guidelines for designing efficient control strategy for complex interconnected systems such as coupled tanks.