Performance and Stability Analysis of a Heat Exchanger

Abstract

This research work focuses on the performance and stability analysis of the heat exchanger based on the time and frequency domain functions. The analysis was carried out to study the behavior of the heat exchanger without a controller in order to determine the particular control method suitable for optimal performance. From the simulation results of the heat exchanger model analysis, the system achieved good overshoot of 0% in the three scenarios of simulation experiments. It recorded settling time of 113sec, 145sec and 196sec respectively for the experiments. This means that its performance is very poor. The system recorded gain margin of -73.8dB, -78.9dB and -80.7dB respectively for the three experiments. It recorded phase margin of -115deg, 50.4deg and 172deg respectively for the three experiments. This means that the system did not satisfy the stability criteria. Therefore, it was concluded that the heat exchanger is not stable for the three scenarios of model parameters. The heat exchanger requires an optimal controller which can help to improve its performance and stability by reducing the reference tracking error and increase the stability margins respectively.