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Energy Conversion and Management 45 (2004) 24052415

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Neuro-PID tracking control of a discharge air temperature system


M. Zaheer-uddin *, N. Tudoroiu
Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada H3G 1M8 Received 15 April 2003; received in revised form 15 September 2003; accepted 23 November 2003 Available online 22 January 2004

Abstract In this paper, the problem of improving the performance of a discharge air temperature (DAT) system using a PID controller and augmenting it with neural network based tuning and tracking functions is explored. The DAT system is modeled as a SISO (single input single output) system. The architecture of the real time neuro-PID controller and simulation results obtained under realistic operating conditions are presented. The neural network assisted PID tuning method is simple to implement. Results show that the network assisted PID controller is able to track both constant and variable set point trajectories eciently in the presence of disturbances acting on the DAT system. 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Discharge air temperature system; SISO system; HVAC systems; Temperature control; Neural network control; PID control; Neuro-PID tuning; Tracking control

1. Introduction The control of heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems is a dicult problem because even the simplest HVAC system models are multi-variable and nonlinear. Furthermore, these systems are acted upon by multiple disturbances. For these reasons, there is considerable interest in developing real time control strategies to improve the performance of HVAC systems. Several specic aspects of HVAC systems modeling and control have been considered in the literature. For example, the issue of discharge air temperature (DAT) control in HVAC systems has been studied by Shavit [1], Nesler [2], Dexter and Haves [3] and Seem [4]. In our research, we
*

Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-514-848-3194; fax: +1-514-846-7965. E-mail address: zaheer@cbs-engr.concordia.ca (M. Zaheer-uddin).

0196-8904/$ - see front matter 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2003.11.016

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are interested in adapting some neuro-modeling procedures to build a real time neuro-PID controller for a DAT system. Single loop feedback controllers are used to maintain the temperature, humidity and pressure at their respective set points in HVAC systems in commercial buildings. Some work has already been done in this area. For instance, the development of control strategies for improving the performance of PID controllers using self tuning and adaptive control techniques has been studied by Dexter and Haves [3], Nesler [2] and Seem [4,5]. The authors conclude that the magnitude of the disturbances found in the HVAC industry causes problems when applying self tuning and adaptive control methods. Also, it has been reported that unmodeled process disturbances and actuator hysteresis limit the eectiveness of the RLS self tuner as such. More recently, adaptive techniques that utilize statistical experimental design methods have been designed [4,5]. Here, we are interested in nding a simple neural network based strategy for tuning the proportional integral-derivative (PID) controller so that the control loop performance is improved while the controller remains in the closed loop. 2. DAT system oriented structure A typical conguration of a DAT system is shown in Fig. 1. Outdoor air (OA) and room return air (RA) are mixed, and the mixed air is ltered and circulated in the cooling and dehumidifying coil. The chilled water ow rate is modulated using a valve, a motor-actuator and a PID controller. The discharge air temperature [CCOTS] is controlled to track a chosen set point by regulating the valve position [VALOP], which varies the mass ow rate [CWFRG] (gpm) of chilled water entering the coil. The experimental setup also includes measurements of chilled water temperatures entering [CWSTS] and leaving [CWRTS] the cooling coil. The temperature of air entering the cooling coil was measured by the sensor [CCITS], and the airow rate was recorded by a dierential pressure sensor [DPS]. Measurements were made of the above variables every 4 s. Several tests were conducted to gather the data needed for training the neural networks. The data collected represented three dierent operating points of the system, the low, medium and high load conditions that typically occur in HVAC systems.
Discharge Air Temperature System
CCITS 25.6 DEG. C CCOTS 11.0 DEG.C

Cooling Coil

OA
CWFRG 4.40 GPM CWSTS 7.0 DEG. C CWRTS 12.0 DEG. C DPS 260.5 CFM

RA
VALOP 58.78 PCT

Fig. 1. The discharge air temperature (DAT) control system.

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From the point of view of modeling, it is useful to conceptualize the DAT system as a multiinput multi-output (MIMO) and single-input single-output (SISO) system as shown, respectively, in Figs. 2 and 3. In the MIMO system, the inputs to the model is chilled water ow rate mw , [CWFRG](gpm), air ow rate Qa , [DPS](cfm), chilled water supply temperature Twi , [CWSTS](F) and cooling coil inlet temperature Tai , [CCITS](F), and its outputs are cooling coil outlet
mw Tao Qa Twi Tai

Cooling Coil

Two

Fig. 2. DAT systemMIMO model input/output functional block: cooling and dehumidifying coil model (mw CWFRG; Qa DPS; Twi CWITS; Tai CCITS; Tao CCOTS; Two CWRTS).

mw

Cooling Coil
Tao

Fig. 3. DAT systemSISO model input/output functional block: sensible coil-model (mw CWFRG; Tao CCOTS).
error backpropagation

z -1

z -1 z -1

Kp _ ynn (k+1)_

K* p

target Kp gain parameter

_ +
Ziegler-Nichols IC

-1

y* (k+1)
z -1

IC Ki Kd Kp u(k)
PID C o ntroller

y (k)

e(k)

DAT Plant Hp (z)

y(k+1)

Fig. 4. Neuro-PID controller structure.

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Fig. 5. Neuro-PID controller-discharge air temperature response for u3 2 F.

temperature Tao , [CCOTS](F) and chilled water return temperature Two , [CWRTS](F). On the other hand, in the SISO model, a more simplistic point of view is taken in order to reduce the model complexity. In the SISO model, the discharge air temperature Tao , is the output, and the chilled water mass ow rate mw , is considered as the input to the system. The other variables were considered as disturbances on the system. In a previous study [6], the predictions from the MIMO and SISO models were compared. It was shown that the SISO model predictions are close to those of the MIMO model. As such, for control design, a simpler model, such as the SISO model, is more suitable than the MIMO model. The resulting inaccuracies in modeling can be compensated by designing robust controllers that can compensate for the model uncertainties. With this as the motivation, we propose to use the SISO model to design a neuro-tracking controller for the DAT system. By tightly regulating the discharge air temperature close to an optimal set point, the overall performance of the system could be improved.

3. Neuro-PID controller Precise modeling of the DAT process is dicult to perform due to its high nonlinearity. Recently, models derived using neural networks have been shown to oer advantages in both accuracy and robustness over more traditional statistical approaches (regression methods). The

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Fig. 6. Neuro-PID controller-chilled water ow rate response for u3 2 F.

neural networks are capable of generalizing and learning dynamic relationships between the inputs and outputs of the plant. Furthermore, the neural networks can constantly update their connection weights to respond to changes in the plant dynamics. Our objective in this research is to determine an accurate neural network based PID controller for the DAT system. The controller is assumed to have the transfer function: Hc z Kp Ki Kd 1 z1 1 z1

and is shown in this paper to provide good tracking performance for the temperature output and to reduce substantially the eect of the disturbances. The self learning feature of the neural networks can be exploited in autotuning the PID gain parameters (proportional gain Kp , integral gain Ki and derivative gain Kd ) where there are nonlinearities that cannot be expressed in closed form or some unidentied dynamic modes [7]. Recent work has developed advanced structures and algorithms, such as adaptive neuro-controllers and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) neuro-controllers. In this study, an inputoutput data set was used to train feed forward neural networks using the error back propagation algorithm. For this purpose, we consider a neural network conguration that consist of three layers [7], namely 522, shown in Fig. 4, trained by an error back propagation technique [8,9]. The neural network training was continued until an error goal, dened by the mean square root error (MSE) criterion, was met. The MSE criterion was dened as

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Fig. 7. Neuro-PID controller-discharge air temperature response for u3 4 F.

1X kyi ti k2 2 i

The back propagation technique in the training of neural networks looks for the minimum of the network error function in weight space using the method of gradient descent, where yi represents the output of the neural network, and ti represents the output target value in the supervised learning mode. To this end, we consider the neural network architecture shown in Fig. 4. In Fig. 4, the plant error and its delayed signals are used as inputs. It was found that ve delayed error signals were needed to capture the dynamics of the DAT control loop accurately. Furthermore, the error between the neural network output and the plant output, as well as the error in the predicted proportional gain and the target proportional gain, were back propagated as shown in Fig. 4. To initiate the training process, one could assign arbitrary values for the PID gain parameters. Alternately, the PID gain parameters could be computed using well known techniques, such as the ZieglerNichols method, and used as initial values. The system error ek was dened ek y k 1 y k 1 and was used in the supervised training mode. For greater eciency, we consider the neural network structure with one parameter xed, for example, the proportional gain KP , and the other parameters (Ki ; Kd ) are then determined directly by the neural network structure, as the outputs of

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Fig. 8. Neuro-PID controller-chilled water ow rate response for u3 4 F.

the hidden layer. The idea behind this scheme is to let the neural network nd all three parameters (Kp ; Ki ; Kd ) by presenting the inputoutput data set of the DAT system. We note that the use of initial PID parameter values obtained using the ZieglerNichols procedure greatly improved the convergence of the algorithm as compared to Ahn [7] where the initiation of the process in closed loop is not specied. Also, the architectural structure of the PID neuro-control strategy is simplied using one single hidden layer, and this eliminates ambiguity in the selection of the output parameters Kp , Ki , Kd . Even though this technique still requires one to specify a target gain (such as Kp when a full PID control is implemented), its advantage is obvious when using only the PI control. In the PI mode, only two gain parameters are needed, which can be updated by the network by back propagating the neural network output and the plant error. Since in many HVAC systems, including the DAT systems, the derivative action is rarely used as such, the network structure shown in Fig. 4 can be readily simplied to a neuro-PI controller by eliminating the target Kp gain.

4. Simulation results In this paper, we consider the case with changes in the discharge air temperature set points (target values): y 55 F for the rst 300 samples, y 60 F for the next 200 samples and

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Fig. 9. New set point trajectory for the neuro-PID tracking controller.

y 50 F for the last 200 samples. The results of the simulations subjected to the changes in set points and disturbances are presented in Figs. 58. We consider changes in chilled water supply temperature Twi u3 as a disturbance on the DAT system. The results depicted in Figs. 58 show the output responses of the system to the changes in set points by 5 F when a 2 F rise in inlet water temperature occurs. In the initial 100 s (25 samples) the valve response (Fig. 6) goes from a full closed to full open position before it stabilizes. This suggests that signicant changes in set points impose a large error on the controller, thus causing rapid movements of the actuators over a short period of time. The control operation is otherwise stable and tracks the desired set point. In the simulations results presented here, the set point of 60 F corresponds to almost no load conditions. Because of this, the control valve is almost closed at this set point as shown in Fig. 6. The sets of responses in Figs. 7 and 8 (with a 4 F rise in chilled water inlet temperature) show similar trends. The eect of increasing the chilled water temperature can be seen by comparing Figs. 5 and 6 (a 2 F change) and 7 and 8 (a 4 F change). Given that in both Figs. 5 and 7, the set points remain the same, it is apparent from Fig. 8 that a higher water ow rate is needed to maintain the same set point when the water temperature is increased by 4 F compared to the water ow rates shown in Fig. 6. These gures reveal a good tracking performance (with zero steady state error), good transient behavior, but a 5 F overshoot in output temperature. Also, the neuro-controller input responses show periods of transients following the disturbance. To eliminate this situation, we have adapted

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Fig. 10. Neuro-PID tracking controller-discharge air temperature for u3 4 F.

a tracking control technique presented by Anderson and Moore [10]. In the technique used, we have built a neuro-PID tracking controller that tracks a reference trajectory such as the one shown in Fig. 9. The simulation results from this neuro-PID tracking controller are depicted in Figs. 10 and 11. It is apparent that the control input responses are smooth even when a 4 F change in chilled water temperature is imposed as a disturbance on the system. The neuro-PID tracking control is useful in minimizing the overshoot. This is achieved by letting the PID controller track a given trajectory. The advantage of this technique is that the steady state time can be chosen a priori to achieve a desired tracking trajectory. The tracking trajectory considered in this paper is shown in Fig. 9. The corresponding DAT responses are depicted in Fig. 10. The speed of response can be improved by selecting a trajectory that reaches the set point faster.

5. Performance evaluation The magnitude of temperature oscillations in the neuro-control strategy is somewhat large due to the fact that the model of the DAT system is nonlinear. For this reason, the actuator responses during the initial few samples seems to be more oscillatory. We have addressed this issue by presenting a tracking solution that represents a new point of view. The responses from this neuroPID tracking controller leads to better performance, reducing the oscillations and the actuator

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Fig. 11. Neuro-PID tracking controller-chilled water ow rate response for u3 4 F.

acts smoothly. This represents a big advantage in practical applications. Overall, taking into account the fact that for the neuro-control strategy, the dynamics of the DAT system could be unknown and the nonlinearity of the actuator is incorporated in its dynamics, we consider the neuro-control strategy very useful for tuning the PID parameters. Experimental work is being planned for validating the control strategy reported in this paper. 6. Conclusion In this paper, we developed real time DAT control strategies for tuning the PID gain parameters. The simulation results reveal that the neuro-PID controller gives good tracking performance. Furthermore, the neuro-PID controller structure proposed can be applied to DAT systems with unknown dynamics and, consequently, eliminate the need for extensive identication. The values obtained for the PID gain parameters are not unique. They represent only one of the solutions for the triplet among innitely many possible ones. In spite of this, this technique still remains useful for HVAC systems for tuning of the PID gain parameters. To avoid overtting, we have limited the number of neurons to as few as possible that yield convergence to the desired error level, and we cut o the training once that error level was reached. The proposed neuro-PID structure gave the best t for the inputoutput data set with the smallest standard deviation error.

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Acknowledgements This work was funded by a research grant (OGP 0036380) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada.

References
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