M6.1 Motivation

Since many chemical processes are modeled as first order + time delay (at least for controller design), it is important to understand the effect of control structure (IMC, P, PI, PID) and tuning parameters on the stability of the nominal (perfect model) and uncertain (actual) closed-loop system. In this module, we use the following transfer function to represent the model

For illustrative purposes, we assume that the units of the gain are in degrees Celsius per percent and that minutes are the time units.