Quanser Coupled Tanks System

The coupled tanks system produced by Quanser, is a type of process control system consisting of two cylindrical tanks and a pump that is designed to provide students and researchers with a benchmark platform for studying control theory and industrial process control. The tanks are arranged vertically, with one tank placed on top of the other whereas the pump fills only the top one. The water then pours from the upper tank to the lower one and from the lower tank to a basin where it pumps again to the upper tank.

Since there are two coupled tanks available in the Lab, it is possible to connect the outlet of upper tanks to each system’s lower tank to form a new system with four tanks named quadruped tank. In this way the complexity and coupling of the system can be increased.

The system can be used to study a wide range of control theory concepts, such as feedback control, feedforward control, cascade control, multivariable control, and model predictive control. Students can design and implement their own control algorithms and observe the system’s response to different inputs and disturbances using Simulink/MATLAB. The system can also be used to simulate various industrial processes, such as chemical reactions, heat transfer, and fluid dynamics.