Author
Listed:
- Wanjun Zhang
- Jingsheng Tong
- Feng Zhang
- Wanliang Zhang
- Jingxuan Zhang
- Jingyi Zhang
- Jingyan Zhang
- Honghong Sun
- Derek O Northwood
- Kristian E Waters
- Hao Ma
Abstract
To address the fixed-parameter limitations of traditional PID control (e.g., excessive overshoot, prolonged settling time, poor adaptability to nonlinearities) and the insufficient real-time adjustment capability of conventional fuzzy PID control, which relies on empirically predefined rule bases, this study proposes a self-correcting fuzzy PID control strategy for agricultural water-fertilizer integrated systems. Traditional PID control, due to its static parameters, suffers from reduced stability and error accumulation under dynamic variations (e.g., irrigation flow fluctuations, environmental disturbances) or nonlinear interactions (e.g., coupling effects of fertilizer concentration and pH). While conventional fuzzy PID control incorporates fuzzy reasoning, its offline-designed rule bases and membership functions lack online adaptive parameter correction, leading to degraded precision in complex operating conditions. To tackle challenges posed by uncertain variables (e.g., time-varying soil permeability) and nonlinear parameters resistant to precise mathematical modeling, this research integrates fuzzy logic with an online self-correcting mechanism, constructs a mathematical model for the integrated control system, designs real-time correction rules, and validates the model through simulations using Matlab/Simulink and a semi-physical PC platform. The results demonstrate that the self-correcting fuzzy PID control significantly optimizes key performance metrics: overshoot (reduced by 21.3%), settling time (shortened by 34.7%), and steady-rate error (decreased by 18.9%), outperforming both traditional PID and fuzzy PID methods in concentration and pH regulation. Its parameter self-adaptation capability effectively balances dynamic response and steady-state performance, resolving issues such as overshoot oscillation and lagging regulation in nonlinear dynamics. In practical applications, the system achieved an average plant height growth rate of 15.86%-21.73% and a 30.41% yield improvement compared to the control group, validating the enhanced synergistic control of water and fertilizer enabled by the variable universe fuzzy PID approach. This study provides a robust control solution with theoretical innovation and practical value for managing complex nonlinear systems in precision agriculture.
Suggested Citation
Wanjun Zhang & Jingsheng Tong & Feng Zhang & Wanliang Zhang & Jingxuan Zhang & Jingyi Zhang & Jingyan Zhang & Honghong Sun & Derek O Northwood & Kristian E Waters & Hao Ma, 2025.
"Integrated irrigation of water and fertilizer with superior self-correcting fuzzy PID control system,"
PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 20(5), pages 1-36, May.
Handle:
RePEc:plo:pone00:0324448
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0324448
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0324448. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.