CFPSO-driven predictive and adaptive PID control for heat exchanger temperature regulation

Abstract A central challenge in the control of complex industrial processes like heat exchangers is the persistent disconnection between global offline optimization and real-time online adaptation, leading to suboptimal performance under dynamic conditions. To address this, this paper proposes a coordinated hierarchical control strategy, CB-BPP, a three-layer framework integrating Chaotic Particle Swarm Optimization (CFPSO), a Backpropagation Neural Network (BPNN) identifier, and a Predictive Functional Control (PFC)-based PID controller. At the top layer, CFPSO performs offline global optimization of the BPNN’s initial weights and establishes safe bounds for controller parameters. The middle layer employs the BPNN for online system identification and real-time adaptation of PID parameters. The bottom layer executes high-precision control. This tiered architecture decouples offline optimization from online adaptation, enabling synergistic control. Comprehensive simulations demonstrate the superiority of CB-BPP, reducing the Integral of Absolute Error (IAE) by up to 45% and improving recovery speed by 35% compared with advanced baseline methods. Furthermore, extensive robustness analysis against sensor noise and parameter drift, alongside a successful Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) implementation, validates its practical applicability. The results confirm the proposed method’s high precision, strong robustness, and real-time feasibility, providing an advanced control solution for complex industrial processes.