Frequency analysis and compensation of valve stiction in cascade control loops

Valve stiction is often a common problem in control loops and stiction induced oscillation is the main cause of poor performance in control systems. Cascade control is extensively applied in process industry as an effective strategy to restrain disturbances and compensate process nonlinearities. In recent years many studies have been performed on the detection and quantification of valve stiction in single feedback control loops. However, there is a lack in developing a mechanism which can analyze stiction induced oscillation in cascade control loops. This work focuses on the frequency analysis of stiction induced oscillations in cascade control loops and proposes a mechanism of oscillation compensation through outer and inner controller tuning. The effect of oscillation compensation by changing control strategies is also discussed. The theoretical analysis is evaluated through simulation examples and a pilot-scale flow-level cascade control experiment.