Integrated optimization of process control and its effect on structural integrity – A systematic review

Abstract

Structural integrity of large-scale industrial facilities is heavily influenced by their dynamical changes, that is, by the way how their instationary transients take place. All such facilities are equipped with controllers, one task of which is to hold the prescribed steady states, but the behavior of which controllers also determine the routes of the transients. Traditional, mostly PID-based controllers can be tuned to be generally slower, but they cannot consider their effects on aging and fatigue of the structural elements in any more specific and intelligent way. On the other hand, most advanced control algorithms are capable of optimizing their actions in any well-formulated respect. Applying this approach was reported to be beneficial in a high number of types of industrial facilities, from which the aviation industry and energy industry seem to stand out (in this historical order), which is illustrated by their actually very hot common term ”maneuverability”. Far beyond the original goal, many studies from many industry branches report a negligible loss in control quality while reducing heavily the structural damage caused. For this, several components are needed, which can be organized into different control configurations – these approaches and achievements will be systematically characterized and critically reviewed in this paper.