Integral windup
Okay kiddo, let me tell you about integral windup. You know how a thermostat works, right? You set the temperature you want and it turns the heat on and off as needed to keep the room at that temperature.
Well, sometimes things don't work that smoothly. Let's say it's a really cold day outside and you set your thermostat to 70 degrees. The heat turns on and everything is good. But then a big cloud comes over the house and blocks the sun from shining in the windows. Now it's getting colder in the house, but the heat can't keep up because it's already working as hard as it can.
This is kind of like what can happen in some electronic systems that use something called a PI controller to regulate things like temperature or pressure. The "I" stands for "integral," which means it keeps track of how far off the desired value the system is and tries to gradually bring it back to where it's supposed to be.
But in some situations, like our cloudy day, the I part can cause problems. If the system is already working as hard as it can to try to get back to the desired value, but it just can't keep up because of some outside force, the I part gets bigger and bigger - like a snowball rolling down a hill.
Eventually, when the outside force goes away and everything is back to normal, the I part is so big that it actually makes the system overshoot the desired value and then it has to work even harder to get back to where it's supposed to be.
This is called integral windup, and it's kind of like when you swing on a swingset and go higher and higher until you're almost upside down. Sometimes it can be a problem for electronics systems that need to be really precise, so engineers have to design ways to prevent it from happening.
Well, sometimes things don't work that smoothly. Let's say it's a really cold day outside and you set your thermostat to 70 degrees. The heat turns on and everything is good. But then a big cloud comes over the house and blocks the sun from shining in the windows. Now it's getting colder in the house, but the heat can't keep up because it's already working as hard as it can.
This is kind of like what can happen in some electronic systems that use something called a PI controller to regulate things like temperature or pressure. The "I" stands for "integral," which means it keeps track of how far off the desired value the system is and tries to gradually bring it back to where it's supposed to be.
But in some situations, like our cloudy day, the I part can cause problems. If the system is already working as hard as it can to try to get back to the desired value, but it just can't keep up because of some outside force, the I part gets bigger and bigger - like a snowball rolling down a hill.
Eventually, when the outside force goes away and everything is back to normal, the I part is so big that it actually makes the system overshoot the desired value and then it has to work even harder to get back to where it's supposed to be.
This is called integral windup, and it's kind of like when you swing on a swingset and go higher and higher until you're almost upside down. Sometimes it can be a problem for electronics systems that need to be really precise, so engineers have to design ways to prevent it from happening.