Design and implementation of water level control for two coupled tank as a simple and low cost apparatus in automatic control engineering education

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to design a simple and low cost prototype apparatus for automatic control engineering education. The activities were arranged in order to support the development of student skill, particularly in control design for water level system. The system was developed from many parts such as coupled water tank, water level sensor, flow actuator and microcontroller. The integrated system characteristic was observed in order to understand the dynamics response and design the proper control law. The open loop system was approximated as first order system and has time constant τ about 7.59 second. The control scheme was designed using the conventional proportional and integral (PI) strategy. The proportional gain and integral gain were derived from dynamic characteristic, resulting 1.96 and 0.25 respectively. The experimental result showed rise time (Tr) 0.06 second, settling time (Ts) 0.17 second and steady state error around 8.55% relative to set point value.