Control Systems (A-Z)
  Laurea Magistrale in Energy Engineering
Milano Bovisa A. A. 2014/2015
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Objectives and contents of the course

The main objective of the course is to provide students with a core understanding of the role of control systems in industrial plants; in particular, what are the fundamental problems of control and what are the design methodologies that can be used to solve them. The first part of the course covers the basics of modelling and control of simple dynamical systems. These basics are then applied to simple single-variable control applications, such as level and temperature controllers, frequency control in power systems, etc. Finally, a broad overview of the principles for the analysis and design of more complex industrial applications is given. Open-source simulation tools are thoroughly used during the course for a better understanding of the role of the presented theory in practical applications.

Course Programme

  1. Introduction: Basic principles of control. Open-loop and closed-loop control systems.
  2. Dynamical systems:Analysis of linear and non-linear dynamical systems. Equilibria and stability. Transfer function, step response, frequency response of linear systems. Block diagrams.
  3. Linear SISO controllers: Analysis and design of linear single-input, single-output systems in the frequency domain. PID controllers. On-off controllers. Applications in the field of energy systems.
  4. Industrial control systems: Advanced control strategies: cascade control, Smith predictor, feed-forward compensation, 2-d.o.f. controllers. ISA-PID controllers. Basic concepts in multivariable control systems and digital control. Applications in the field of energy systems.

Lab sessions

For lab sessions, bring your laptop to the class. Please install the OpenModelica suite in advance. The software is available for Windows, Linux and MacOS (with some limitation). Please install the latest stable release (currently 1.9.2), or the latest nightly build. Note that the size of the installation file is over 400 MB, so you need a good network connection, or some friend with the installation files. We will use the OMNotebook tool, which allows to build interactive documents containing  models of dynamical systems written in the Modelica language, run simulations and plot simulation results. We will make a limited use of the Modelica language, that you can learn from the examples. If you get interested in Modelica and want to probe further, I recommend the excellent online book Modelica by Example, by Mike Tiller.

The OMNotebook files for the lab sessions are posted here.

It is advisable to decompress the files in a directory without spaces in the pathname, avoiding the Desktop in Windows systems.

Course organization and exams

The course is organized with classroom lectures, exercise sessions, and hands-on simulation-based lab sessions. The course can be successfully passed in two alternative ways: the first is meant for people attending classes regularly, who want to spread the workload throughout the entire semester, the second is a standard written test during the regular exam sessions.

Mode A
Mode B

Textbooks

Exam papers / Temi d'esame

You can also refer to older exam papers in Italian.

Office hours / Ricevimento Studenti


francesc.casella@polimi.it , Last updated