Robust composite temperature control of electrical tube furnaces by using disturbance observer

Abstract

As one type of resistance furnace, the electrical tube furnace (ETF) typically experiences input noise, measurement noise, system uncertainties, unmodeled dynamics and external disturbances, which significantly degrade its temperature control performance. To provide precise, and robust temperature tracking performance for the ETF, a robust composite control (RCC) method is proposed in this paper. The overall RCC method consists of four elements: First, the mathematical model of the ETF system is deduced, then a state feedback control (SFC) is constructed. Third, a novel disturbance observer (DO) is designed to estimate the lumped disturbance with one observer parameter. Moreover, the stability of the closed loop system including controller and observer dynamics is also analyzed by using the Lyapunov theory. Finally, numerical simulations are performed on the plant model of the ETF to demonstrate the efficiency and capabilities of the proposed control method.

Keywords

• Electrical tube furnace
• Temperature control
• ETF model
• Robust composite control (RCC)
• State feedback control (SFC)
• Disturbance observer (DO)