A fuzzy PID-based cascade control for continuous material weighing conveyor

Abstract

This article presents a nonlinear model of the continuous weighing conveyor system as considering the delay time of material transport, and then given a novel two-loop control strategy based on PID combined with fuzzy logic: inner velocity control loop and outer mass flowrate control loop. Then, two designed controllers for the velocity and mass flowrate control loops are simulated and evaluated in MATLAB. After that, experimental setup of real-time weighing conveyor system is built in the UTC’s laboratory. Finally, these controllers are installed into PLC to control the material mass flowrate following on the reference input. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed fuzzy-PID algorithm is right and able to improve the material mass flowrate control quality in industrial continuous weighing conveyor system using PLC controller.