OPTIMIZATION OF A CONTROLLED INDUSTRIAL WINDER WITH PENDULUM DANCER MECHANISM

The plant considered in this paper is an industrial winding system with pendulum dancer mechanism. Such dancer have been rarely presented and studied in publications. Transport system dynamics change dramatically due to the wide variation in roll radii and inertia. Industrial systems typically use decentralized PID controllers. In this paper we present the model and an H∞ control design of such winding system. In order to improve the performance of a LTI controller, the mechanical parameters are optimized in order to desensitize the static gain as well as the dynamic behavior, over a large frequency bandwidth, with respect to the web elasticity and velocity. A multi-model H∞ robust control with gain scheduling significantly reduces coupling between web tension and velocity. Performances of this new controller and industrial controller are compared.