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q Institution of Chemical Engineers
Trans IChemE, Vol 76, Part A, May 1998

DOUBLE-CONTROLLER SCHEME FOR SEPARATING

LOAD REJECTION FROM SET-POINT TRACKING
YU-CHU TIAN and FURONG GAO
Department of Chemical Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

I
n the design of a conventional feedback control system, a dif® cult compromise has to be
made between the set-point tracking performance and load rejection performance. A
novel double-controller scheme is proposed in this paper to alleviate this compromise.
This control scheme has two controllers, a set-point controller and a load controller, which
result in the separation of the load response from the set-point response in a closed-loop
system. These two controllers can be designed independently to achieve good system
performance for both set-point tracking and load rejection. Also, good robustness of the
double-controller scheme to variations in system dynamics can be obtained by properly
designing the load controller. The proposed scheme is applied to two dif® cult problems, set-
point tracking in the presence of process uncertainty and control of a process with dominant
time delay. The results show that the proposed double-controller scheme is superior to a
conventional single controller system.
Keywords: process control; double controller; set-point tracking; load rejection

INTRODUCTION process is described by:

The design of a control system has two main objectives: set-
point tracking and load rejection, which are referred to
respectively as the servo problem and the regulator problem.
In a classical feedback control system with a simple
structure, shown in Figure 1, a single controller is used to
simultaneously solve both the servo problem and the
regulator problem. The symbols R and L represent set-
point and load respectively. When the set-point changes, the
controller sends control signals to make the process track
the set-point. In the case of a load change, the same
controller regulates the process at a constant set-point to
reject load disturbance.
In the classical control system, this single controller is
expected to perform well for both the servo problem and the
regulator problems, i.e., for set-point tracking and for load
rejection. This requirement is often con¯ icting. Optimal set-
point tracking and optimal load rejection cannot be obtained
simultaneously with a single controller. This con¯ ict can be
demonstrated by the ITAE (integral of the time-weighted
absolute error) PID (proportional-integral-derivative) con-
troller design for a ® rst-order plus delay process1 . The
resulting optimal PID controller settings are different
depending on whether the set-point tracking or the load
rejection are considered. Unless a pure regulatory problem
is considered, a compromise between set-point tracking and
load rejection has to be performed, which is a dif® cult task
because there is no clear and simple compromise method.
Moreover, a compromise means that `optimal’ performance
can be obtained for neither set-point tracking nor load
rejection.
To illustrate this inherent drawback of the single
controller system, consider an example discussed by
Seborg, Edgar and Mellichamp in their textbook2 . The
445
4
P(s) = e- 3.5s (1)
7s + 1
It is assumed that a PID controller is employed to control the
above process. The ITAE PID controller settings are
Kc = 0.435, Ti = 9.69 and Td = 1.13 for set-point tracking
and Kc = 0.654, Ti = 4.98 and Td = 1.34 for load rejection,
where Kc , Ti and Td are respectively controller gain, integral
time and derivative time. These two sets of controller
parameters are clearly different. To illustrate the effects of
these two sets of controller parameters on system perfor-
mance, a unit step change in set-point at t = 0 and a
negative unit step change in load at t = 100 are respectively
introduced as excitation signals to the system. Figure 2
shows the responses of the closed-loop system with these
two sets of `optimal’ controller parameters. The solid line
corresponds to the controller settings for set-point and the
dashed line to the controller settings for load. It is clear that
the controller settings for set-point are more conservative
than those for load. The settings for set-point result in a
sluggish load response, while the settings for load lead to
signi® cant overshoots to set-point changes. In reality, set-
point changes and load disturbances are both likely to occur,
a compromise in the controller settings, therefore, has to be
employed. There is no clear and systematic methodology to
perform or eliminate such a compromise.
The objective of this paper is to propose a new control
structure, which will be referred to as a double-controller
scheme, to separate load response from set-point response
in a closed-loop system. The scheme contains two con-
trollers, a set-point controller and a load controller. With this
double-controller scheme, both optimal set-point response
performance and optimal load response performance can be
446
Figure 1. A conventional single controller feedback system.
obtained simultaneously by independently designing the set-
point controller and the load controller. Performance
compromise is no longer necessary. The effectiveness of
this proposed double-controller scheme will be demonstrated
by applying to two dif® cult control problems: (1) set-point
tracking in the presence of process uncertainty; and (2)
control of a process with dominant time delay.
DOUBLE-CONTROLLER SCHEME
The main feature of this scheme is the employment of two
separate controllers to independently control set-point
response and load response. The controller for set-point is
referred to as the set-point controller, and the controller for
load is called the load controller. To assure the separation of
these two responses, the control scheme should have the
following features in its structure:
(1) The load rejection loop does not contain the set-point
controller;
(2) The set-point controller does not use the process output
or any variables affected by load changes in the load
rejection loop as its feedback signal; and
(3) In contrast to the set-point controller as stated in (2), the
load controller uses the process output as its feedback
signal.
Taking into account these three requirements, the ideal
feedback measurement for the set-point controller is the
load-free process output, which is unfortunately unavail-
able. This ideal feedback signal, however, can be produced
by a process model. The process model input is the set-point
controller output. Figure 3 gives the structural diagram of
the double-controller scheme, where Y and Y * are process
output and model output respectively. It is seen from this
® gure that the process model output is also fed to the load
controller as its set-point to eliminate the system set-point
effect on the load rejection loop and to compensate for the
inevitable model mismatch.
To analyse the double-controller scheme quantitatively,
the overall transfer functions relating the system output to
the set-point and the load are derived below. Let Gc1 and Gc2
Figure 2. A comparison of PID controllers designed using ITAE criteria for
set-point (solid line) and for load (dashed line).
TIAN and GAO
Figure 3. The double-controller scheme.
denote the controller 1 (set-point controller) and the
controller 2 (load controller) respectively, as shown in
Figure 3. The process and its model are represented by P and
P* . Then:
Y (s) Gc1 (s)P(s) 1 + Gc2 (s)P* (s)
R(s) = Hr (s) =
1 + Gc1 (s)P* (s) 1 + Gc2 (s)P(s)
(2)
Y (s) P(s)
L(s) = l = 1 + Gc2 (s)P(s)
H (s) (3)
Equation (3) clearly indicates that the load response of the
closed-loop system is determined only by the load controller
Gc2 and has been separated from the set-point response.
Therefore, the load controller can be designed indepen-
dently to achieve a good load rejection performance. This is
an important feature of the double-controller scheme.
From equation (2), with a good process model, i.e.,
P* (s) < P(s), the set-point response becomes:
Gc1 (s)P(s)
Hr (s) = (4)
1 + Gc1 (s)P* (s)
The above equation implies that the set-point response is
independent of the load controller and determined only by
the set-point controller. As a result, the set-point controller
can be also designed independently. This is another
important feature of the double-controller scheme. The
design objective of the set-point controller is to obtain a
good set-point tracking performance.
For a properly designed set-point controller and load
controller, the following relations hold:
lim Hr (s) = 1, lim Hl (s) = 0 (5)
s! 0 s! 0
These relations imply that the process output will track the
set-point at steady state without any error for set-point and
load changes. For example, with the PID control law in both
the set-point controller and the load controller, the above
relations are true for most chemical processes if the closed-
loop system is stable. In addition to the PID controller, other
more sophisticated control algorithms can also be used in
the double-controller scheme to get improved system
performances.
The effectiveness of the double-controller will be shown
through applications to two dif® cult control problems in the
following sections.
APPLICATION TO SET-POINT TRACK ING WITH
PROCESS UNCERT AINTY
Set-point tracking with process uncertainty is an
important problem in the process industries. For example,
Trans IChemE, Vol 76, Part A, May 1998
 DOUBLE-CONTROLLER SCHEME FOR SEPARATING LOAD REJECTION FROM SET-POINT TRACKING 447
set-points are adjusted to keep the process in optimum. This
may be due to the changes in the catalyst activation. In
injection molding, injection velocity set-point is pro® led to
be harmonious with the product shape. In cold rolled steel
strip annealing, the set-points of annealing furnace tem-
peratures are required to be continuously changed according
to the measurements of steel grip temperatures. In all these
examples, the closed-loop systems are required to track the
set-points quickly to ensure the production ef® ciency and/or
product quality.
Set-point tracking with process uncertainty is also a
dif® cult problem in the conventional single controller
system, since a good set-point tracking performance
cannot be simultaneously met with a good load rejection
requirement. This constraint can, however, be easily
removed using the double-controller scheme due to its
separation of the load rejection response from the set-point
tracking response. One may obtain good set-point tracking
performance by designing the set-point controller, while the
load rejection performance can also be optimized indepen-
dently. It will be shown through simulations that even in
the presence of the process uncertainty, the set-point
tracking performance of the double-controller scheme is
still superior to that of the conventional single controller
system.
Let us reconsider the example of equation (1), where the
process was controlled by a conventional single controller.
Using the double-controller scheme, the ITAE PID set-point
controller settings are Kc1 = 0.435, Ti1 = 9.69 and Td1 =
1.13, while the ITAE PID load controller settings are
Kc2 = 0.654, Ti2 = 4.98 and Td2 = 1.34. These two con-
trollers are designed independently and no compromise
between the set-point tracking and the load rejection is
required. The results are to be compared to that of the single
controller system. To compare the control performances
under the same standard, the conventional single controller
system has to be designed to behave with the same set-point
response or load response as the double-controller scheme.
In this section, the set-point responses of the two control
schemes are compared with each other under the same load
rejection.
Figure 4 gives the simulation results for double-controller
(solid line) and single controller (dashed line) systems when
the process model is perfect. The excitation signal is the
same as that discussed in the Introduction, i.e., a unit step
change in set-point at t = 0 and a negative step change in
load at t = 100. As designed, the load responses of the
double-controller scheme and the single controller system
overlap each other, indicating these two systems have the
Figure 4. A comparison of the set-point tracking performances of the
double-controller scheme (solid line) and the single controller system
(dashed line).
Trans IChemE, Vol 76, Part A, May 1998
Figure 5. Set-point tracking responses of the double-controller scheme
(solid lines) and the single controller system (dashed lines) for the delay
time deviating from the nominal value of 3.5 to (a) 4.2 and (b) 2.8.
same load rejection performance. Therefore, the load
performances of the two systems will not be shown in the
following simulations. It can be seen from Figures 4 and 2
that the double-controller scheme is clearly superior to the
single controller system in having `optimal’ performance in
both set-point tracking and load rejection.
The effects of the process uncertainty on the closed-loop
system performance are now studied with the controller
parameters kept unchanged. The variation of the process
delay time is considered ® rst. The delay is changed 6 20%
from its nominal value of 3.5. Corresponding to the positive
and negative delay changes respectively, Figures 5(a) and
(b) give the set-point responses of the double-controller
scheme (solid lines) and the single controller system
(dashed lines). It can be seen that the double-controller
scheme has smaller oscillations and faster set-point
tracking.
The variation in the process gain strongly affects the
closed-loop system performance. The deviation of the
process gain from its nominal value of 4 is considered.
The set-point responses of the double-controller scheme
(solid lines) and the single controller systems (dashed
lines) are shown in Figures 6(a) and (b) for the process
gain deviating to 5 and 2 respectively. Better set-point
tracking performance with clearly shorter settling time and
smaller overshoot is obtained with the double-controller
scheme.
The variation of the process time constant also affects the
closed-loop system performance. Suppose the process time
constant deviates to 6 and 10 respectively from its nominal
value of 7. The corresponding set-point responses are shown
in Figures 7(a) and (b) respectively, where the solid lines
Figure 6. Set-point tracking responses of the double-controller scheme
(solid lines) and the single controller system (dashed lines) for the process
gain deviating from the nominal value of 4 to (a) 5 and (b) 2.
448 TIAN and GAO
Figure 7. Set-point tracking responses of the double-controller scheme
(solid lines) and the single controller system (dashed lines) for the process
time constant deviating from the nominal value of 7 to (a) 6 and (b) 10.
represent the double-controller scheme and the dashed
lines represent the single controller system. Clearly, the
double-controller scheme gives superior set-point tracking
performance to the single controller system.
The above simulations show that with an `optimal’ load
rejection design, the double-controller scheme provides a
better set-point tracking performance than the single
controller system even without a good process model. In
the same token, with the same `optimal’ set-point tracking
performance, the double-controller scheme provides super-
ior load rejection to the single controller system in presence
of system uncertainty. The results, however, will not be
shown here to reduce the paper length.
APPLICATION TO DOMINANT DELAY
PROCESSES
Time delay is a common phenomenon in industrial
processes. Also, many higher-order delay-free processes
can be approximated by a lower-order process plus a time
delay. The control of time delay processes is, therefore, an
important subject for the process industry. It is, however, a
dif® cult problem due to the severe limitations introduced by
time delay, especially dominant time delay, on control
performance and system stability. The Smith predictor is an
effective control scheme to compensate the dominant delay
with a good process model3 . An inherent drawback of the
Smith predictor is its performance sensitivity to the process
model, especially to the delay time. Deviation of the process
dynamics from the process model, for which the Smith
predictor is designed, results in poor or even unstable
closed-loop performance. The double-controller scheme is
shown below to be very effective and more robust than the
Smith predictor for processes with dominant time delay.
This is another useful application of the double-control
scheme to dif® cult control problems.
As in any closed-loop system, it can be seen from Figure
3 that if the processes and consequently the process model
contain a pure time delay, the set-point tracking speed will
be limited in the set-point controller design, especially in the
presence of a dominant time delay. To further improve set-
point tracking in a closed-loop system, a slight modi® cation
is made to the original double-controller scheme shown in
Figure 3 to yield an alternative structure shown in Figure 8.
It can be observed from Figure 8 that the delay term of the
process model has been moved to the position between the
feedback signal of the set-point controller and the set-point
Figure 8. An alternative structure of the double-controller scheme for
dominant delay processes.
of the load controller. As a result, the set-point control loop
does not contain any time delay and therefore can be
designed to have a fast set-point tracking speed. This
alternative double-controller scheme is used throughout in
this section. The delay may be included in the set-point
control loop without clear performance deterioration if the
delay is not dominant.
Let P(s) = G(s)e- ds , and consequently P* (s) = G* (s)e- d s ,
*
where G and G* do not contain any delay, d * is an estimate
of the delay d. The overall transfer function of the double-
controller scheme shown in Figure 8 for set-point changes
is:
Gc1 (s)Gp (s)e- ds 1 + Gc2 (s)G*p (s)e- d s
*
Hr (s) =
1 + Gc1 (s)G*p (s) 1 + Gc2 (s)Gp (s)e- ds
(6)
The overall transfer functions of Figures 8 and 3 for load
changes are the same as equation (3). Therefore, the
schemes of Figures 8 and 3 have the same load rejection
performance. From equation (6), if the process model is a
good description of the process, then:
Gc1 (s)Gp (s)e- ds
Hr (s) = (7)
1 + Gc1 (s)G*p (s)
Compared with equation (4) for Figure 3, equation (7) does
not contain any delay in its denominator, implying that
better set-point tracking performance could be obtained for
the alternative double-controller scheme of Figure 8 than
that for the original double-controller scheme in Figure 3.
Suppose the process dynamics are governed by a ® rst
order plus delay process as:
Kp*
P* (s) = * e- d d
s
(8)
Tp s + 1
This assumption is reasonable because many industrial
processes can be approximated by this kind of model. As
shown below, the controllers designed on the basis of a ® rst-
order plus delay model are also effective for higher-order
processes, including an under-damped process. It has been
mentioned previously that for a ® rst-order plus delay
process, the relations shown in equation (5) obtained for
Figure 3 still hold for the alternative double-controller
scheme shown in Figure 8 with a PID type of controller,
which indicates that the closed-loop system will track the
set-point at steady state without offset for a stable closed-
loop system. The design of the set-point and load controllers
is discussed below.
Equation (7) can be viewed as a combination of a pure
delay term and a delay-free feedback system with the set-
point controller. The set-point controller can then be
Trans IChemE, Vol 76, Part A, May 1998
 DOUBLE-CONTROLLER SCHEME FOR SEPARATING LOAD REJECTION FROM SET-POINT TRACKING 449

designed as for a process without delay under the

assumption of a perfect model. This is the same as the
Smith predictor. For a ® rst-order process model without
delay, the application of the direct synthesis method is
straightforward for the set-point controller design. Suppose
the desired set-point response of the closed-loop system
is Hre (s) = Gr (s)e- ds . Making equation (7) equal to Hre (s)
gives:
1 Gr (s)
Gc1 (s) = * (9)
Gp (s) 1 - Gr (s) Figure 9. A comparison of the double-controller scheme and the Smith
For the process model described by equation (8), the desired predictor in the case that the process model is perfect.
Gr (s) can be chosen to be:
Gr (s) = 1/ (Te s + 1) (10) (14). Like the previous simulation example, a unit step
change in set-point at t = 0 and a negative step change in
where Te is the desired closed-loop time constant.
load disturbance at t = 100 are introduced as excitation
Substituting equation (10) into (9) leads to:
signals. To compare the performances of the two control
Tp* 1 schemes under the same standard, the two schemes are
Gc1 (s) = 1+ * (11)
Kp* Te Tp s tuned to have the same set-point response at the nominal
case. This implies that the same PI controller settings are
Equation (11) is a PI controller with the controller gain Kc1 adopted in the set-point controller of the double-controller
and integral time Ti1 as: scheme and the Smith predictor controller.
Kc1 =T *
p / (Kp Te ),
*
Ti1 =T *
p (12) Figure 9 shows the responses of the double-controller
scheme (solid line) and the Smith predictor (dashed line)
Selecting 0 < Te < T or Te $ T will result in a lead or lag
*
p
*
p with a perfect process model. The set-point responses of the
control action. When Te = Tp* , the open-loop time constant two systems overlap each other, implying the two systems
is retained in the closed-loop system. have the same set-point tracking performance. The load
The direct synthesis method is improper for the load response of the double-controller scheme is slightly sluggish
controller design because both the numerator and the compared to that of the Smith predictor to accommodate the
denominator of the load response Hl (s) contain delay inevitable model uncertainty.
term. A PI type control law has been selected for the load For all the following simulations, the process model and
controller design for simplicity. This, however, does not consequently all the controller settings, are kept unchanged,
mean that only PI control law should be used for the load while the process dynamics are changed to simulate the
controller design. Conventional PI tuning methods cannot process uncertainty in delay time and dynamic order. To
be used directly for processes with a dominant time delay. It reduce the length of this paper, the variations of process
has been found that Haalman’ s formulae give acceptable time constant and process gain, which affect the perfor-
results4 although it is conservative for dominant delay mance of the closed-lop system but not as strongly as
processes. It has, therefore, been decided to modify process delay and process dynamic order, are not con-
Haalman’ s formulae for tuning the load controller. For a sidered. For delay time variations, simulations show that the
® rst order plus delay process model (8), Haalman’ s PI Smith predictor becomes unstable for d > 5.2 or d < 2.7,
controller parameters are: while the double controller scheme has a much larger stable
2Tp* range of 0 < d < 9.9. Figure 10 gives the responses of the
Kc = , Ti = Tp
*
(13) double-controller scheme (solid line) and the Smith
3Kp* d *
predictor (dashed line) for d = 3. The double-controller
In the case of dominant time delay, a common modi® cation scheme has fast set-point trackings and good load rejection
factor a is introduced into the Haalman’ s controller gain and without obvious oscillations, indicating that the double-
integral time to speed up the load response with: controller scheme is superior to the Smith predictor.
Kc2 = a Kc , Ti2 = a Ti , a $ 1, (14) If process dynamics change from the original ® rst-order
where a = 1 corresponds to the original Haalman’ s
formulae (13). The selection of a should guarantee a
suf® ciently large gain margin and phase margin.
As an example, the process approximated by the ® rst-
order plus delay model (8) is considered with Kp* = 2,
Tp* = 0.8 and d * = 4. The double-controller scheme of
Figure 8 is applied to this process. To tune the PI set-point
controller, the desired closed-loop time constant Te in
equation (10) is set to be the same as the open-loop time
constant Tp* = 0.8, leading to the PI set-point controller
settings of Kc1 = 0.5 and Ti1 = 0.8 from equation (12). The
modi® cation factor a is chosen to be 2.5 for the load Figure 10. A comparison of the double-controller scheme and the Smith
controller design. The corresponding PI load controller predictor for the process delay time deviating from the nominal value of 4
settings are Kc2 = 1/ 6 and Ti2 = 2 from equations (13) and to 3.

Trans IChemE, Vol 76, Part A, May 1998

450
Figure 11. Responses of the double-controller scheme and the Smith
predictor in the case that the process dynamic changes signi® cantly to an
under-damped higher-order plus delay.
plus delay to an under-damped higher-order plus delay
with P(s) = 2/ [(0.8s + 1)(s2 + 0.7s + 1)]e- 4s , as shown in
Figure 11, the Smith predictor becomes unstable and
therefore fails to work. In contrast, the double controller
scheme works well even when the process dynamics have
been changed signi® cantly. These simulation results
indicate that excellent robustness, fast set-point tracking
and good load rejection can be achieved with the proposed
double-controller scheme. This scheme provides a structure
that allows a separation control of the set-point tracking and
the load rejection. It is, therefore, possible to design a load
controller to accommodate large system uncertainty, while a
fast set-point response is maintained by a separate set-point
controller.
DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
Utilizing multiple-controller in a system has been
successful for dif® cult industrial problems. For example,
in a multi-input multi-output system, additional controllers
are used to eliminate the interactions of different control
loops. A cascade control scheme also uses two controllers, a
master controller in the outer loop and a slave controller in
the inner loop, to suppress the load effect and to speed up
set-point response. These multiple-controller schemes,
however, do not address the response decoupling issue of
the load rejection and set-point tracking. A system using the
novel double-controller structure proposed in this paper
allows a separate optimal design of both the load rejection
response and set-point response.
TIAN and GAO
The following conclusions may be drawn. A simple and
practical double-controller scheme with two alternative
structures has been proposed in this paper to separate load
rejection response from the set-point tracking response in a
closed-loop system. The compromise between these two
responses required in the conventional single controller
system is no longer necessary. The double-controller
scheme contains two controllers, a set-point controller and
a load controller. Set-point tracking performance and load
rejection performance can be optimized separately by
independently designing each controller. The proposed
double-controller scheme has been applied to two dif® cult
problems: (1) set-point tracking in the presence of the
process uncertainty and (2) control of the processes with
dominant delay time. It has been shown that in both cases
the double-controller scheme performs well. The perfor-
mance of the double-controller scheme can be improved
even further by using sophisticated algorithms for the set-
point controller and/or the load controller, but the emphasis
of this paper is to introduce this novel control structure. The
authors believe that the double control scheme, with its
simple structure, can be easily applied to many industrial
processes.
REFERENCES
1. Lopez, A. M., Murrill, P. W. and Smith, C. L., 1967, Controller tuning
relationships based on integral performance criteria, Instrum Technol,
14(11): 57.
2. Seborg, D. E., Edgar, T. F. and Mellichamp, D. A., 1989, Process
Dynamics and Control (John Wiley & Sons, New York) pp. 285±286.
3. Smith, O. J. M., 1957, Closer control of loops with dead time, Chem
Eng Prog, 53(5): 217±219.
4. Haalman, A., 1965, Adjusting controllers for deadtime processes,
Control Eng, 12: 71±73.
ADDRESS
Correspondence concerning this paper should be addressed to Furong
Gao, Department of Chemical Engineering, The Hong Kong University
of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
(E-mail: KefGao@ust.HK). Yu-Chu Tian is on leave from the Institute
of Industrial Process Control, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027,
P.R. China.
The manuscript was received 4 November 1997 and accepted for
publication after revision 26 January 1998.
Trans IChemE, Vol 76, Part A, May 1998