Principles and Uses of Proportional Control
Proportion Control is a control system that uses many controllers, The aim of a proportional
control system is to ensure that a device is controlled properly. Normally a proportional
control system is integrated into most systems. This allows for more flexibility in response
times than any other control systems even if it’s slow or quick. Proportional control makes
sure that the output of the device it’s controlling is going to stay similar to what it was set to
originally. Even if the output has been exceeding, the device's power will slowly be reduced
to equal out towards what the output originally was. It does this by using an algorithm which
finds out the difference between the setpoint and the process variable.
Examples
One example of proportional control is a toilet, whenever
a toilet is flushed it will refill with fresh water. However,
the toilet (Unless blocked etc…) will never overflow
because it has a valve which controls the incoming water
flow. Once the tank is full of water proportional control will
take place and shut off anymore incoming water flow, and
the incoming water that was stopped will be ready for
when the toilet is flushed again.
Another example of proportional controls is a car, not most cars have this feature, the feature
being cruise control. Cruise control will maintain the speed of your vehicle to a speed you
have set it to, due to the flexibility of proportional control it is very handy when you want to
reduce or increase the speed of your vehicle.
An example of this working is, say you were going 30 mph and a car in front is slowing you
down you would speed up and overtake the car. What proportional control will do is will slow
you down once you have completed the act of overtaking and have released the accelerator.
Conclusion
I have found out Proportional Control is all around us, whether it be our cars or our toilets.
Proportional control has lots of advantages, much more than any other control system.
However it can be difficult to integrate because it’s quite a complex system and must meet
certain conditions, especially when it comes to something as serious as controlling the
speed of your car.
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