Host: Woo haa! Woo hoo! Sit down big boy and tell us if everything is bigger in Texas.
Teksun: Ahm uh big fayun and haly preciate being on TayVay. Did yew know thet thuh pipelines are bigger in Teksus, which makes thuh valves bigger, which makes thuh stick-slip bigger, which makes thuh limit cycle bigger and control more difakult?
Host: Tell us about your sensitive side.
Teksun: Ah am fixin tuh git fine valves for my rilly important loops and use model-predictive control tuh do uh rilly good job of simultanusly throttling Big Hoss and Little Jo tuh cover uh rilly big flow range without split range.
Host: How does this make you feel?
Teksun: It jes make me feyul az fine az frogs hair.
Host: How do you get in touch with yourself?
Teksun: Ah levus thet tuh ma wife.
Host: Control TalkThe Early Years is our book of month. All that talk about model-based control, decoupling, and invcrse response made our readers hot. Is it going to end up in a classroom?
Teksun: Thets uh hoot and uh hollar. Ah kinduh doubt professors will want it for theez 10 raysuns.
Top 10 Reasons Why a Practical Book on Control Wont be a College Text
- Costs less than $50
- None of the authors have PhDs
- Contains Top 10 lists
- Shows flow sensors upstream instead of downstream of the control valve
- Discusses stick-slip and backlash
- Shows unmeasured load upsets as inputs to the process
- Includes field implementation considerations
- Estimates tuning settings to just one decimal place
- Doesnt use tensor analysis for flow loops
- Depicts signal lines in figures as electronic instead of the pneumatic academic standard
Greg: Since the response to our puzzlers has been puzzling, were going to end each column with a trend chart of the month and simply ask, What is wrong? The only clue will be in the grand academic tradition of giving the dynamics of the process and ignoring the effect of the valve, sensor and transmitter. In other words, the process gain, delay (dead time), and lag (time constant) in the heading of the trend chart are exclusive of non-ideal instrumentation and implementation of the loop.
This Month's Puzzler
Waiting for an Invitation?What is a cause of the hesitation and slowness in the approach of the process variable to its new set point in the following trend: Process Gain = 1, Delay = 10 sec, and Lag = 5 sec?Send an e-mail with your answer to The Puzzler, CONTROL questions, or comments to
[email protected].
Greg McMillanandStan Weiner, PE, bring their wits and more than 66 years of process control experience to bear on your questions, comments, and problems.