Real Time Identification & Control of Pneumatic Systems

Servo pneumatic systems have properties that can make them favorable for servo applications. The actuators themselves are of simple construction, making them low in cost. They have a high power-to-weight ratio. Compressed air is readily available in most industrial environments. Air is highly compressible, which makes the systems' behavior highly non-linear, and designing a controller for such systems very complicated. The complexity arises in acquiring the system's transfer function accurately, which causes a great difficulty in servo-pneumatic system modeling and control, Moreover, it is highly complicated to adopt a strategy that does not require a lot of time in building a controller.Therefore, this research strives to apply a methodology for identification and control of servo pneumatic using a particle swarm optimization technique as the tuning method in the controller design. Moreover it aims at applying the concept of Hardware in the loop (HIL) as a real time simulation environment which allows the system to be controlled easily without damaging any component of the system or extra cost in building the controller itself by replacing components according to application.