Process Control: Modeling, Design, and Simulation

8.6. IMC Background

The main advantage to IMC is that it provides a transparent framework for control-system design and tuning. As we show in this chapter, the IMC control structure can be formulated in the standard feedback control structure. For many processes, this standard feedback control structure will result in a PID controller (sometimes cascaded with a first-order lag). This is pleasing because we can use standard equipment and algorithms (i.e., PID controllers) to implement an “advanced” control concept.

The IMC design procedure is exactly that of the open-loop “control” design procedure developed in Section 8.3. Remember that a factorization of the process model was performed so that the resulting controller would be stable. If the ...