Development of automatic flow control system based on LabView

A flow control system was designed and fabricated to control the flow rate of liquid through the pipe. This control system was composed of hardwares and software, hardwares as controller, gate valve, orifice meter and data aquisition board and software as National instruments Labview program. Control of flow rate was executed by adjusting the pneumatic valve located at the center of pipe line based on the control signal generated by LabView PID control algorithm, which converts analog signal measured by pressure difference of orifice to digital signal to adjust pneumatic valve. For the controller setup Ziegler-Nichols tuning technique was applied and control performances were investigated for not only the disturbance but also the set point changes. Developed system showed good control performances in flow control enough to use as teaching tool of feedback control theory and practice in university, and also as industrial application.