AutoQuiz is edited by Joel Don, ISA's social media community manager.

This automation industry quiz question comes from the ISA Certified Automation Professional (CAP) certification program. ISA CAP certification provides a non-biased, third-party, objective assessment and confirmation of an automation professional's skills. The CAP exam is focused on direction, definition, design, development/application, deployment, documentation, and support of systems, software, and equipment used in control systems, manufacturing information systems, systems integration, and operational consulting. Click this link for more information about the CAP program.

Using forward decoupling, the objective is to:

a) accumulate the interaction between two process variables and their outputs
b) cancel out the interaction between two process variables and their outputs
c) use feedback to eliminate the gain of one process variable and its output
d) use a decoupling algorithm to eliminate all gain between outputs
e) none of the above

Answer A is not correct; accumulation of the interactions would be counterproductive to the loop performance, and would simply magnify the coupling between inputs and outputs.

Answer C is not correct. Simple feedback can be used to make adjustments to the output based on a measured or calculated quantity, but simple feedback cannot be used to eliminate the process gain between a process variable and its own output.

Answer D is not correct. Similar to Answer C, a decoupling algorithm does not eliminate "all gains between outputs," but rather, when used in a forward decoupling method, can be used to cancel the interactions between multiple inputs and their outputs.

The correct answer is B, "Cancel out the interaction between two process variables and their outputs." In MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) systems, often the process variables and outputs interact with one another, which makes control of the independent variables difficult. A forward decoupling algorithm can be used to cancel out these interactions, making more traditional control methods applicable to these complex systems.

Reference: Greg McMillan and Robert Cameron, Models Unleashed: Virtual Plant and Model Predictive Control Applications

About the Editor
Joel Don is the community manager for ISA and is an independent content marketing, social media and public relations consultant. Prior to his work in marketing and PR, Joel served as an editor for regional newspapers and national magazines throughout the U.S. He earned a master's degree from the Medill School at Northwestern University with a focus on science, engineering and biomedical marketing communications, and a bachelor of science degree from UC San Diego.

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