Decentralized PID controller for TITO systems using characteristic ratio assignment with an experimental application

•Design of decentralized PID controller for TITO systems.•Higher order plant model is reduced to FOPDT model.•PID controllers are designed using CRA method.•The proposed algorithm is experimentally validated.

This paper presents a decentralized PID controller design method for two input two output (TITO) systems with time delay using characteristic ratio assignment (CRA) method. The ability of CRA method to design controller for desired transient response has been explored for TITO systems. The design methodology uses an ideal decoupler to reduce the interaction. Each decoupled subsystem is reduced to first order plus dead time (FOPDT) model to design independent diagonal controllers. Based on specified overshoot and settling time, the controller parameters are computed using CRA method. To verify performance of the proposed controller, two benchmark simulation examples are presented. To demonstrate applicability of the proposed controller, experimentation is performed on real life interacting coupled tank level system.