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Abstract: A closed loop controller is designed for regulation of the volumetric output flow
in a polymer extruder. To this aim, temperature and pressure at the machine output must be
controlled on the basis of real time measurements. It has been verified that temperature and
pressure regulations can be achieved by solving two disjoint control problems. The
temperature controller acts on the heat delivered to the plastic material by the heater
electric resistance bands on the barrel; the pressure controller uses as a control action the
voltage applied to the screw electrical engine in order to obtain real time modulation of the
screw revolution speed. The designed control system shows very good performances in
regulation of the flow output and good robustness properties to variations in the operating
conditions and the material properties. Copyright 2005 IFAC
Keywords: Extrusion, Polymer processing, Cascade control
1. INTRODUCTION
Polymer extrusion is a very important process in the
plastic industry. The extrusion process has a standard
setup including a feeding section, a barrel and a head,
including a die for shaping. In the feeding section, the
polymer is fed into the extruder through a hopper in
the form of pellets, if pure new material is used or in
the form of irregular small bits, when using recycled
material. Then, the polymer is transported along a
barrel through different zones by means of the screw
action. In the barrel the material is compacted and
melted and pushed towards the die where the extruded
final product is expelled.
During the process, the material undergoes very
complex thermo-mechanical transformations inducing
HEAD
BARREL
HOPPER
SCREW ENGINE
has four heater bands and the head has three of them.
The heaters can be switched on and off by means of
electromechanical relays driven by PWM command
signals with duty cycle d1,,d7, respectively. Each
heater band has a temperature sensor (J-thermocouples
with range from 40 C to 333 C). In the following,
the temperature measurements from the heaters will be
named T1, , T7. The screw electrical engine is driven
by an inverter whose command voltage V can be
modulated between 0 V and 5 V corresponding to a
screw revolution speed between 0 rpm and about 200
rpm. The screw revolution speed is measured by a
unidirectional incremental encoder with maximum
speed range of 5000 rpm and with a resolution of 250
pulses per revolution.
All the measured variables are sent to a data
acquisition board on a PC with sixteen analog input
channels. The temperature signal acquisition is
performed at 1 Hz sampling rate. The pressure signal
acquisition is performed at 10 Hz sampling rate. An
analog output board with eight channels provide the
command signals to drive the heaters and the screw
engine. The PC is endowed with the operating system
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and all the
control algorithms and signal filtering is performed by
using National Instruments Labview.
The output volumetric flow Q strictly depends on the
material output pressure Pout and temperature Tout
(Rauwendaal, 2001). Eq. 1 gives the dependence of the
output flow from the material properties and the output
pressure and temperature for a SSE:
3
rout
Pout rout
(1)
1 2 Ae BTout l out
3 +
n
220
215
Tout [C]
210
205
200
195
10
15
20
t [min]
25
30
35
40
d1(t)
d7(t)
Tout(t)
EXTRUDER
Pout(t)
V(t)
25
20
Pout [bar]
15
10
10
15
20
t [min]
25
30
35
40
Tout (t )
Temperature
controller
+
Pout (t )
Pressure
controller
+_
Tout(t)
d7(t)
EXTRUDER
Pout(t)
V(t)
T1 (s )
935.5 146.8 s
e
=
(2)
d 1 (s ) 1 + 1644 s
On the basis of the model of Eq. (2) the controller
parameters have been tuned. Again considering the
first heater as an example, the parameters of the
controller are: proportional gain K p = 0.0144 ;
F1 (s ) =
_
_
_ +
Regulator
heater 1
Regulator
heater 2
Regulator
heater 7
+
T (t )
Primary
Temperature
Regulator
T1(t)
d1(t)
T2(t)
d2(t)
EXTRUDER
T7(t)
d7(t)
Tout(t)
_
+ Tout (t )
245
240
235
230
T1 [C]
225
220
215
210
205
200
5
10
15
20
t [min]
25
30
35
40
Pout (s )
4.9
=
(4)
e 0.1472 s
1 + 1.2028s
V (s )
On the basis of the estimated model, the parameters of
a PID controller have been tuned using the area
method (Astrom and Hagglund, 2000). The controller
parameter values are: proportional gain K p = 2.0011 ;
Pout [bar]
195
0
26
140
25
135
24
130
23
125
22
120
21
115
20
110
19
105
18
100
17
95
16
time
Ti = 0.2946 ;
derivative
time
RESULTS
10
15
20
t [min]
25
90
35
30
G p (s ) =
integral
Tout, T [C]
214
212
210
208
206
204
202
200
10
15
20
25
30
35
t [min]
Tout [C]
217.5
5.
CONCLUSIONS
215
212.5
6.
REFERENCES
210
207.5
205
10
15
20
25 30
t [min]
35
40
45
50
25
120
23
Pout [bar]
22
110
21
20
19
100
18
17
90
24
16
15
10
15
20
25 30
t [min]
35
40
45
80
50