A ceramic kiln is a two-input/two-output system where temperature and atmosphere (hydrogen or carbon monoxide) inner it are controlled by fuel and a damper. The ceramic kiln has a huge heat capacity and is a nonlinear system because the combustion characteristics in the kiln is always changing due to interference of temperature and atmosphere. Experts, therefore, have been controlling it based on their experimental knowledge.
In this paper, we try to control the ceramic kiln by fuzzy control. First, we make a kiln model based on the combustion theory. Next, we choose membership functions of the fuzzy controller while simulating the fuzzy control of the ceramic kiln using the kiln model and fuzzy production rules given by experts. Finally, we make experiments on the fuzzy control for a real ceramic kiln in Shigaraki, Shiga Prefecture, and show some experiment results.
