Tuning: Learn more about feedforward controllers

-- Control Engineering, 8/1/2007

Research Triangle Park, NC—ISA will hold a course entitled “Tuning of advanced controllers” Aug. 6, focusing on practical, useful ways to tune feedforward controllers in the processing industries without requiring advanced mathematics. The course will be offered in conjunction with NI Week and ISA’s Alliance Day Activities at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX.

The course will cover the operation and application of advanced regulatory control methods including ratio, cascade, adaptive feedforward, override, and deadtime control. It will also cover strategies, means to study process dynamics needed for implementation, and how to tune advanced control systems to improve control of various types of processes for more efficient process operation.

Upon completion of the course, attendees are awarded 0.7 CEU credits. Attendees will know how to recognize when advanced controls are beneficial; explain feedforward control and list the benefits; run plant tests to determine feedforward relationships; calculate the feedforward constants; explain what adaptive or scheduled gain is; and more.

For more information about the seminar, visit ISA’s website.

For more on loop tuning, see these Control Engineering articles:

• Fundamentals of Self-Tuning Control
• Feedback loops control discrete, continuous processes
• The Three Faces of PID

—Edited by Lisa Sutor, Control Engineering daily news desk