Sliding mode control of coupled tanks

The paper deals with the level control of two coupled tanks. A static sliding mode control scheme is proposed for the system. To greatly reduce the chattering problem associated with the static sliding mode control scheme, two different dynamic sliding mode control schemes are proposed. The proposed control schemes guarantee the asymptotic stability of the closed loop system. To illustrate the developed control schemes, the performance of the closed loop system is simulated using MATLAB. Moreover the proposed control schemes are implemented using an experimental setup. The simulation as well as the implementation results indicate that the proposed control schemes work very well. In addition, robustness of the control schemes to change in system's parameters as well as to disturbances are investigated. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.