Construction and Evaluation of PID Control System for Irrigation Canals in Laboratory Scale

Automation is one of the main options for improving operations and increasing flexibility in
irrigation canals. Construction and testing of related technology is one of initial and main
attempts in reaching this goal.. In this research PID classical control system was constructed,
and tested at a laboratory flume. The hardware of the system includes the depth and gate
opening sensors, motor, slide gate, electronic boards and computer. The software part of the
system is the PID control system, which is developed and connected with equipments using
LABVIEW software. To study the performance of the constructed control system, different
scenarios of sudden changes of upstream and downstream flow were tested. Maximum Absolute
Error (MAE), Integral of Absolute magnitude of Error (IAE) and System Response Time (SRT)
indicators are used for evaluating the performance of the system. The results showed that the
performance of the developed upstream and downstream control system is appropriate,
However, downstream PID control system showed better performance when compared to the
upstream PID control system. The developed PID automatic control system and experiences
gained from constructed facilities could be implemented in irrigation canals.