Predictive and Backstepping Control of Double Tank Process: A Comparative Study

This paper addresses the nonlinear control design problem for a state-coupled two-tank liquid-level system. For this system's dynamics, motivated by a desire to provide precise liquid-level control, two radically different control approaches are presented and compared: the model predictive control and the backstepping control. In the first proposed approach, a model-based predictive controller is designed for the two-tank liquid-level system that ensures exponentially stabilization for a particular class of second-order nonlinear system. Moreover, a robust controller based on a backstepping strategy is designed in order to ensure globally asymptotically stabilization for another particular class of second-order nonlinear systems. To ensure a suitable basis for their comparison, two different control methods are designed and verified with the same test setup. To highlight the efficiency and applicability of the proposed control schemes, theoretical comparisons as well as experimental results are provided and discussed.