1

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

1.1

TEMPERATURE CONTROL
The temperature control in industry is a crucial process.

Temperature control decides the nature and rigidity of the material. The
temperature control is a tedious process which involves monitoring and
quick response from the controller. Extrusion is a well established
technique widely used in different industries like aluminium, sheet and
plastic.
The extruder typically consists of large barrel divided in to
several constant temperature zones, with a hopper at one end and die at
another end. The extrusion process control system had to be based upon
the use of timers, counters, individual temperature controllers and speed
controllers. Less satisfactory performance has been achieved by such
systems due to the dependence of human operators for the combination
of the individual controllers. The advent of the intelligent controller
embedded into microcontroller accomplishes a high degree of
temperature control for the plastic extruder.
The given product is requiring a specific temperature profile
from the first to the last zone. Appropriate control of the curing
temperature of the final product as it moves away from the die in critical

for the quality of the finished product. The temperature for the barrel
required is to be higher than the plastic melting temperature and lower
that its decomposing temperature, but also the distribution of
temperature must be kept uniform.
The controller based on this algorithm has been succeeding in
practical application for the temperature control of the heating system
for the barrel of the extrusion process. Temperature control in a plastic
extruder is of high importance, because it effectively affects the product
properties and quality. Commonly used PID controllers can not perform
on systems which include varying parameters, complexity and
computational burden.
The PID controllers cause large derivative values during some
set point changes, process upsets, and more time to take stabilizes the
process. Due to the gains and time constants of the controlled plant
change significantly with disturbances the control effects of the
conventional PID are not ideal.
The implementation of PID controllers retunes their three
term parameters so as to ensure that the dynamic behaviour of extruder
performance is satisfactory along with the specific heat, thermal
conductivity and ambient temperature which vary with time. However
PID controller perform well only at a particular operating range and it is
necessary to retune the PID controller if operating range is changed. The
PID controllers do not provide contented results for nonlinear and dead
time process. In addition with that the flow of heat from one temperature
zone to another may cause bad transient response for the heating process
under set point and load variation.

The artificial neural intelligent control scheme can be trained

to perform as a controller by learning inverse model dynamics of the
plant or as a predictor by identifying the forward model and able to
control temperature of the system. When there can be significant
uncertainties and changes in the plant dynamics, intelligent adaptive
control lends itself as a powerful control strategy and dynamic back
propagation learning algorithm is widely used for tuning of the
corresponding neural network structures. The convergence speed of this
learning method is very slow especially when the search space is
complex. This leads to poor transient responses because of the slow
error convergence and may be undesirable for tasks requiring precision.
So these problems make to design the fuzzy controller to
control the temperature. Fuzzy controller performances are less sensitive
to parametric variations. The fuzzy controller can be designed without
knowing the mathematical model of system. Fuzzy logic controllers
have been reported successful for a number of complex and nonlinear
processes. In the Fuzzy tuned PID the optimal value of the PID
controller parameters Kp, Ki, Kd is to be found using fuzzy logic. All
possible sets of controller parameter values are particles whose values
are adjusted to minimize the objective function.
The proposed neuro fuzzy controller has the integral
advantages of neural and fuzzy approaches and they are used for
intelligent decision making systems. Neural networks and fuzzy logic
represent two distinct methodologies to deal with uncertainty. Neural
networks can model complex non linear relationships and are quietably
suited for classification phenomenon of predetermined classes. Neural

networks and fuzzy logic are different technologies which can be used
to accomplish the specification of mathematical relationships. Among
numerous variables in a complex dynamic process, these perform
mappings with some degree of imprecision in different ways used to
control non linear systems.

1.2

OBJECTIVES OF THE THESIS

The main objectives of the thesis are to address the above

limitations and develop methods to overcome the limitations. The

objectives are:
(i) To extract an analysis about the importance of
temperature control, non linear characteristics, stability
analysis, robustness and performance of the plastic
extrusion system.
(ii) The analysis of the plastic extruder model, heater
specification and types with its ranges, temperature
sensing device, types of heaters, dimension of the heater,
power ratings of the heater for the plastic extrusion plant.
(iii) To implement the intelligent temperature controllers like
neural networks, fuzzy and fuzzy tuned PID controllers.
Implementation of neuro fuzzy controller for the plastic
extrusion

system

using

MATLAB/Simulink.

To

implement the neuro fuzzy intelligent control strategies in

LabVIEW for the temperature control of plastic extruder.

(iv) To design a prototype hardware for temperature control of

a plastic extruder using PIC 16F877A controller.
(v) To analyse the MATLAB/Simulink and real time
experiment results.
In all the above cases, the extrusion was not focused on fast
tracking the capability of the set points, lag in performance of the time
domain specification. It was unable to reject the disturbances in the
multistage coupled extruder, steady state error and robustness to load
disturbance during steady state and transient conditions. Hence, it is
necessary to design and develop an embedded based intelligent
controller to get optimum performance under all operating conditions.
1.3

CONTRIBUTIONS
1. Study and analyze the plastic extrusion temperature controller non
linearity, stability and robustness.
2. Analyze the different conventional and intelligent temperature
controller models for plastic extrusion system and different
temperature control plants.
3. Design and implementation of a PID, neural networks, fuzzy
logic, and fuzzy tuned PID and neuro fuzzy temperature
controller

model

for

plastic

extrusion

system

using

MATLAB/Simulink. Design and implementation of a neuro fuzzy

temperature controller using Virtual Instrumentation software
(LabVIEW) using simulation interface toolkit.

4. Design and implementation of a conventional and embedded

neuro fuzzy temperature controller for plastic extruder using PIC
16F877A with real time experimental setup.
1.4

OUTLINE OF THE THESIS

The thesis is organized into seven chapters. Each chapter

highlights the contributions and significant results arrived in respect to

the investigations undertaken.
Chapter 1 presents the general introduction about the
temperature controller and the necessity of the intelligent controllers.
The objectives and contributions to the research works are presented.
Chapter 2 explains the previous investigations on temperature
control in plastic extrusion system are stated in the literature and the
drawbacks of the previous works are discussed. The overcoming of
drawbacks in the previous works is presented.
Chapter 3 explains briefly about the plastic extrusion system
and the problem on temperature control in the system. The need and
importance of the process is given with necessary industrial data
collection. The manipulated and controller variable profiles are
described.
Chapter 4 describes the mathematical model of the
temperature controller of plastic extrusion system. The PID control
design methodology for the heater in plastic extruder is explained. The
implementation of PID controller for the plastic extrusion and their
results are presented. The design and development of neural networks

temperature control model for plastic extrusion system is described and

its test results are concluded. The chapter explains the fuzzy logic
intelligent

controller

design

and

implementations

using

MATLAB/Simulink. In this research, the effectiveness of fuzzy logic

controllers in dealing with the highly non-linear characteristics of the
plastic extrusion system is highlighted. The MATLAB/Simulink results
are described. The fuzzy tuned PID controller design and its test results
are described. The neuro fuzzy controller design and development for
the plastic extruder simulated using MATLAB/Simulink. The neuro
fuzzy controller output performance is highlighted and it is compared to
other conventional controllers. The neuro fuzzy controller design and
development for the plastic extruder using LabVIEW virtual
instrumentation, using simulation interface toolkit and described in
detail. The simulation test results are presented with detailed
description.
Chapter 5 explains the laboratory model design for
temperature controller of a plastic extruder. The hardware development
of a temperature controller system for a plastic extrusion system based
on PIC 16F877A microcontroller is described. The main advantage of
the neuro fuzzy hardware model is implemented in the proto type
laboratory model. The conventional and neuro fuzzy controller hardware
test results are presented.
Chapter 6 draws the result analysis and discussion with the
comparison of the hardware and MATLAB/Simulink test results.
Chapter 7 discuss the conclusion from the work done in this
research enables further discussion and directions of research possibility
in the future.