Advance in Electronic and Electric Engineering. ISSN 2231-1297, Volume 3, Number 4 (2013), pp. 477-484 © Research India Publications http://www.ripublication.com/aeee.htm Design of a Model Reference Adaptive Controller Using Modified MIT Rule for a Second Order System 1 Priyank Jain and 2 Dr. M.J. Nigam 1 Electronics & Communication, IIT Roorkee, S-116, Govind Bhawan, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, INDIA 2 Electronics & Communication, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, INDIA Abstract Sometimes conventional feedback controllers may not perform well online because of the variation in process dynamics due to nonlinear actuators, changes in environmental conditions and variation in the character of the disturbances. To overcome the above problem, this paper deals with the designing of a controller for a second order system with Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) scheme using the MIT rule for adaptive mechanism. In this rule, a cost function is defined as a function of error between the outputs of the plant and the reference model, and controller parameters are adjusted in such a way so that this cost function is minimized. The designed controller gives satisfactory results, but is very sensitive to the changes in the amplitude of reference signal. It follows from the simulation work carried out in this paper that adaptive system becomes unstable if the value of adaptation gain or the amplitude of reference signal is sufficiently large. This paper also deals with the use of MIT rule along with the normalized algorithm to handle the variations in the reference signal, and this adaptation law is referred as modified MIT rule. The performances of the proposed control algorithms are evaluated and shown by means of simulation on MATLAB and Simulink. Keywords: Model Reference Adaptive Control, Adaptive Controller, MIT rule, Normalized Algorithm, Modified MIT rule.