The objective of this study is to investigate the Model predictive control (MPC) strategy, analyze and compare the control effects with Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control strategy in maintaining a water level system. An advanced control method, MPC has been widely used and well received in a wide variety of applications in process control, it utilizes an explicit process model to predict the future response of a process and solve an optimal control problem with a finite horizon at each sampling instant. In this thesis, we first designed and built up a closed-loop two-tank water level system. Next, we modeled the system and linearized the model for simplification in the analysis and design. Then, we implemented the model in a simulation environment based on Matlab. We tried both MPC and PID control methods to design the controller for the two-tank system, and compared the results in terms of settling time, overshoot, and steady-state error under various operational conditions including time delays. The results showed the advantage of MPC for dealing with the system dynamic over PID and could be designed for more complex and fast system dynamics even in presence of constraints.
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