Self-Tuning PI Control Using Adaptive PSO of a Web Transport System with Overlapping Decentralized Control

Abstract

Web transport systems for transporting films, textile material, paper, etc., are usually large-scale systems. The velocity and the tension of web are controlled by dividing the systems into several subsystems in which strong coupling exists between the velocity and tension control. A self-tuning PI (STPI) controller with an estimator based on a novel adaptive particle swarm optimization method is constructed, and it is applied for controlling an actual web transport system. The controllers are designed the basis of the methodology of the overlapping decentralized control by taking into consideration online executions performed by a general computer. The effectiveness of the constructed control system is verified on the basis of several experimental results obtained by using an actual experimental web transport system.