A model predictive control package for undergraduate education

Abstract

Model predictive control (MPC) techniques are extremely profitable control strategies and are well accepted in the chemical processing industry so it is important that chemical engineering graduates have a fundamental understanding of MPC. This understanding will help them make contributions in industry where these control strategies abound. Without such knowledge, graduates would not understand a major part of the control structure present in modern manufacturing systems and would have difficulty understanding how to modify and improve those chemical manufacturing systems to take advantage of new technology.In this paper we describe a new software package developed and tested by the authors for teaching undergraduates the fundamentals of MPC including its suggested application in the classroom. The package is similar to existing industrial model predictive control packages in that the same steps are required to implement a model predictive controller as follows: model identification, controller configuration, controller simulation and tuning. We describe our experience using the package to introduce MPC to an advanced undergraduate process control II class. The package has also been used to provide an MPC laboratory experience for a graduate class on industrial process control.