Multivariable PID Control of a Boiler

This document presents the proposal of the authors to the Control Engineering Benchmark 2016, organized by the Control Engineering Group of the Spanish Committee of Automatica. This is the winner design in the postgraduate category. The benchmark proposes the design of a control system for a boiler, that is modelled by a nonlinear multivariable model with three input, three output, and a measurable disturbance. The control system presented in this report is based on the design of a multivariable proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller by using convex optimization techniques. In addition, prefilters for the references and for the measurable disturbance have also been proposed. Finally, the performance of the designed control system is shown under the same scenarios to the ones considered in the benchmark