Background

The second edition of "Controller Tuning and Control Loop Performance" has been extended in both directions from the first. Sections have been added for the very beginner and for the somewhat more experienced. It is about twice the size. Sections have been added on the what-to-do and how-to-do-it of tuning, to help the person who may have never done it before. Then, interspersed throughout are paragraphs that extend some of the non-math concepts to the realm of math, or at least algebra. These sections explaining concepts in math (sometimes frequency response terms) are clearly identified to make them easy to skip. This Second Edition still stands on its own, of explaining the essence of feedback control, without referring to math. I hope these new references will help any reader who wants to bridge the gap from the non-math to the math. I have tried to make this second edition appeal to readers whose background may not be the chemical processing industries. I know I can only partly succeed in this broadened scope, for all of my 40 years in the automatic control business were in that industry. I hope this booklet meets what I perceive as a need for more information on the beginning end of training on the subject of controller tuning and control loop performance.