Control of temperature uniformity in the temperature chamber with centrifugal acceleration

• A method for control of temperature uniformity in the test chamber is proposed.
• The controller is composed of two sub-controllers.
• The tracking performance is ensured and the temperature nonuniformity is decreased.
• This study provides an easy method for the MIMO control system without decoupling.

A novel method for control of temperature uniformity in the combined environmental testing is proposed. The structure of the temperature test chamber is introduced and the multi-input multi-output (MIMO) temperature control system is designed, in which the plant is approximated by the first-order plus time delay (FOPTD) model. The control objectives are summarized as making the average output temperature track the reference input and making the temperature at different spots track the average temperature. The controller is composed of two sub-controllers, each of which ensures the tracking performance of the average temperature and improves the uniformity of the temperature field, respectively. Both the simulation and experimental results show that the nonuniformity of the temperature field can be decreased effectively by the proposed method even if the temperature field is disturbed by centrifugal acceleration. The method provides an easy way to control the uniformity of the temperature field without decoupling and precise system identification.