Global Congress on Intelligent Systems

Research on Tension Control System Based on Fuzzy Control Algorithm

Ru Feng School of Electronic and Control Engineering, Chang'an University Xi'an 710064, China E-mail: fengru@chd.edu.cn Jiang Jie, Hu Fei-hu School of Electrical Engineering Xi'an Jiaotong University Xi'an 710049, China jiangjie1128@163.com Zou Wei-qi School of Electronic and Control Engineering, Chang'an University Xi'an 710064, China

Abstract
First, the mathematical model of tension for coil is built after making deep research on coil production process and operation flow of its entry section. Based on fuzzy control algorithm and empirical rules, tension variation and its change rate are determined as input variables for the fuzzy controller of the tension control system. According to general steps and special requirements, the fuzzy controller is then constructed to realize adaptive adjustment control of the system. The simulation result shows that the fuzzy control algorithm can achieve better control effect. Finally, an experimental platform is set up to test the fuzzy control system. The result shows that the improved tension control system can satisfy the control requirements of rapidity, stability and accuracy.

1. Introduction
Tension control system is one of the hotspot technologies widely used in modern industries. Tension control is to control the tensity of the material during transmission and production in industries such as paper making, metallurgy and etc. It is widely used in different industries such as rolling processing industry, cloth manufacture industry, tobacco industry, aluminum processing industry, plastic film processing industry and etc. To ensure the product quality in steel pipe production industry, tension must be well controlled. Because in the production process, improper tension will make production out of order and cause damage to production departments. Excessively big tension will change the thickness and width of the material. When it is serious, the material will even be fractured, which threatens the safety of operators. Excessively small tension will wrinkle the material. Tension control in practical steel pipe production is a time-varying and nonlinear system,
978-0-7695-3571-5/09 $25.00 2009 IEEE DOI 10.1109/GCIS.2009.41 308

which has variable parameters, variable load and strong disturbance[1]. So it is an urgent problem to be solved. There is a new technique called FFX (Flexible Forming Exact) in steel pipe industry. It can manufacture steel pipes with different diameters in a product line. The operation of uncoiling and feeding is implemented in the entry section of FFX product line. Subsequent processing is based on the quality of uncoiling in the entry section, so the tension of uncoiling steel should be appropriate In FFX projects, PID algorithm based on indirect tension control is generally adopted to realize its tension control. PID is a classical algorithm in the field of process control. It plays an important role in tension control due to its simplicity and wide regulating range. But it needs more practical experience to obtain the optimal parameters of PID controller and a proper input according to the desired output. Moreover, speed and tension are cross coupling in uncoiling tension control system which is a nonlinear system with multiple inputs and outputs. So tension control effect cant be well satisfied by using ordinary PID control. And because of the particularity of the controlled system, large overshoot is not permitted, which adds more difficulty to the system design For the problem above, the paper proposes to adopt fuzzy control algorithm in the application of tension control system. Fuzzy control has the ability of adaptive control for both input and output based on fuzzy rules, which improves the complicated process of getting PID regulating parameters.

2. Model construction of tension system

From figure 1, the technological process of uncoiling can be seen clearly. Coil is put on a mandrel by a coil car before uncoiling. At the beginning, the coil is unfolded slowly with the running of the mandrel

and transmitted to a pinch roll by haulage gear. After the coil is clamped by the pinch roll, because there is speed difference between the mandrel and the pinch roll, the coil between them bears a quantity of tension. The pinch roll keeps a constant speed of n1 according to the feeding speed after normal operation. By adjusting the speed of the mandrel marked as n2, the tension can be kept constant. Then a constant tension control system is formed[2].
Snub roll Backup roll Pinch roll leveler

V =

D 2
60

(4)

Mandrel

Figure 1 Uncoiling model Figure 2 shows a simplified model of tension control system. When building dynamic tension model between the two rolls, the three physical laws below should be considered.

Assume that the strip steel bears a tension marked as T and the diameter of the roll is D. At the beginning of uncoiling, it is obvious that the speed of roll 1 is higher than that of roll 2, which generates a tension on the strip steel. If V<V, there will be no tension, which cant ensure the uncoiling quality. So first make V<V when the decoiler is started up. Then increase V until V>V. At this time, the strip steel is of a constant speed due to the constant tension. At the same time, elastic deformation is generated in the strip steel. Uncoiling tension T of the strip steel can be obtained by transforming equation 2. E t (5) T = (V 'V )dt l 0 where E is the elasticity modulus of the strip steel; is the cross-sectional area of the strip steel; l is the distance between the two rolls; t is the time that the decoiler spends establishing the tension. As the regulation object of uncoiling tension, the strip steel is an integrating unit. The signal transmission relation is shown in figure 3.
E
l

Figure 2 simplified tension model (1) Hook law: Elastic material between the two rolls bears a tension marked as T. (L L 0 ) (1) T = E
L
0

Where E is the elasticity modulus of the material; is the cross-sectional area of the material; L and L0 are respectively the length of the material before and after the material is stretched. (2) Coulomb law: T can be regarded as the static friction between the rolls and the material. (3) Coulomb law: Motion characteristic equation can be obtained by derivation to equation 1.

Figure 3 Signal transmission relation With equation 3 and 4, equation 5 can be transformed as:
T =

E D
60 l

(n ' n )dt
0

(6)

Where and E are constants for the same material. Then tension T can be controlled by the speed of roll 1 and 2.

dT dt

3. Fuzzy tension control system

3.1. Structure of fuzzy controller
Fuzzy control is an intelligent control based on experience. It does not need accurate mathematical model to describe dynamic process of the system, so its design method is different from that of ordinary controllers. Generally, the design of fuzzy controllers is first to determine related parameters and their control rules and then make repeated adjustments at run time to achieve the optimal control effect[3]. The structure of fuzzy controller is shown in figure 4. It consists of fuzzification, knowledge base made up

= E (V ' V )

(2)

For tension control, first it is necessary to know its transmission model and analyze its motion process. In figure 2, the model shows a traditional steel transmission system. Follow the direction of strip steel transmission speed, the speed of roll 1 is n and its diameter is D1 and its linear velocity is:

V' =

D 1
60

n'

(3)

The diameter of roll 2 is D2 and its speed is n and its linear velocity is:

309

of database and rule base, fuzzy inference machine and disfuzzification[4].

Figure 4 Structure of fuzzy controller

3.2. Design of fuzzy tension controller

S1: determine input variables and output variables of the fuzzy controller. In the tension control system, tension variation of uncoiling motor is determined as an input variable. Other factors such as moment of inertia and deformation of coil are neglected. The fuzzy algorithm only focuses on how to well control the speed and tension. In practical tension control system, difference of rotational moment between mandrel motor and pinch roll motor is regarded as tension of the material. The tension marked as e is different from the are determined as presented, so e and its change rate e the inputs of the fuzzy algorithm, and speed change of the mandrel is determined as its output marked as u, which is shown in figure 5.

only satisfies the control precision, but also simples the problem. (3)Membership function selection: based on experience, appropriate membership function can be determined for each linguistic variable. Then their corresponding valuation tables can be built. After fuzzification, values of input and output variables are changed into membership confined to [0,1]. S3: fuzzy control algorithm design and rule table creation. Fuzzy control rules are obtained by summarizing the experience of operators. By fuzzy mathematics, they are processed and turned into fuzzy relations, which form the rule base. There are totally 7*7=49 fuzzy rules, which show relations between inputs and outputs of fuzzy control. For this system, the rule table is shown in table 1. Table 1 Rule table of fuzzy output

Figure 5 Block diagram of fuzzy control S2: fuzzification. (1)Universe transformation: Universe is quantization number of linguistic variables. Practical universe of input variables must be transformed into their internal universe, which is done by multiplying a quantization factor or scaling factor. In this system, the range of motor speed difference is wide and precision is highly required. So the and output variable u universes of input variables e, e are defined as follows: e: {-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3} : {-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3} e u: {decelerate_fast(-0.9), decelerate_middle(-0.6), decelerate_slow(-0.3), no_change(0), accelerate_slow(0.3), accelerate_middle(0.6), accelerate_fast(0.9)} (2)Value selection of input and output linguistic variables: PB, PM, PS, P0, N0, NS, NM and NB are generally used in designing fuzzy controller. In practical use, they should be determined according to the specific object. and u are For convenience, the fuzzy sets of e, e defined as {NB, NM, NS, Z0, PS, PM, PB}, which not

S4: fuzzy inference. By fuzzy inference, each fuzzy condition in the rule table acquires a fuzzy relation. By integrating all the fuzzy relations by OR relationship, fuzzy relation of the whole control system is obtained. S5: Defuzzification. Defuzzification is the reverse process of fuzzification, and it generates the output control value of the result based on fuzzy inference. The controlled object can only accept a precise control, which must be generated from the fuzzy decision-making set. Defuzzification is the process to map the fuzzy set generated from fuzzy inference to the plain set of output. It also needs to inverse inner universe to real universe of the control value, so that the control value can be applied to the controlled object. There are methods of defuzzification such as maximum membership, median value, and centroid, and in this paper centroid is adopted.

4. Simulation and implement of the fuzzy tension control system

4.1. Simulation construction of the fuzzy control system
The Fuzzy Logic Toolbox in Matlab 7.0 is used to edit and simulate the fuzzy control algorithm[5]. First, Gaussian Fuzzy Graph is used to make fuzzification

310

 based on experience. And repeated for e and e comparisons show that the best effect of controlling can be obtained when the wide of Gaussian pattern is set to 0.8. And the equation of the graph is
y = e
( x c )2

, where is 0.4. Figure 10 Block diagram model of the fuzzy control system The response curve is shown in figure 11, in which the overshoot Mp<16%, the settling time (when steady-state error is set to 2%) is about 35Ts, rising time is about 7Ts and steady-state error is 0 after 40Ts, and at this time the system is in steady state.

Figure 6 Fuzzification of e

Figure 7 Fuzzification of e The universe of fuzzy output u is defined as (-1,1), and the membership of every fuzzy output variable is (0,1), and triangle function is used as the membership graph.

Figure 11 Step-response curve of the fuzzy control system The simulating results show that the response curve of fuzzy control system is smooth. And it has better effect in speed, precision and steadiness and can save a lot of work in adjusting the parameter of PID system. As a result, the course and result of the simulation proved the advantages of fuzzy control method.

4.3. Test of the fuzzy control system

Figure 8 Fuzzy set of output linguistic variables

4.2. Simulation result analysis

According to the fuzzy control system designing steps, a system is acquired, of which relation between inputs and outputs of fuzzy inference is shown in figure 9. The figure intuitively shows the trend how

output variable u changes with input variable e and e according to the fuzzy rules.

The fuzzy intension control system uses PLC as its main controller, the model of which is CPU 3172DP/PN. The system is shown in figure 12, which is a simplified model. Two motors are connected by a Vbelt. And Motor 1 drives the pinch roll, which is the drive wheel, and Motor 2 drives Mandrel, which is the passivity wheel. Both are outputting torque. At a certain time, the speed of the drive wheel is set to a constant, and the speed of passivity wheel is adjusted to make sure there is a constant difference between the torques of the two. And the difference of the torques can be seen as the approximation to the tension on the material. Controlling the difference in a certain range make is real to control the tension.

Figure 9 Surface of the input and output of the fuzzy inference The tension controlling unit in tension control system is simulated, and the transfer function is set to 3.6/(156s+1). The fuzzy control method is simulated too, which is shown in figure 10.

Figure 12 Net structure diagram of fuzzy control system

311

The platform of the system is constructed as shown in figure 13.

can realize the tension control and meet the technique needs, which means it can make sure the steadiness, constant speed, precision of tension during executing uncoiling.

5. Conclusions
Figure 13 Hardware of the control system The program in PLC is edited by using ladder diagram linguistic, and the flow chart is shown in figure 14. This paper adopted the method of combining Simulink tool with ladder diagram language to accomplish designing and simulating the fuzzy controller and the whole system is adjusted and tested in the laboratory successfully. After applying changes to the fuzzy rules according to repeated tests, the fuzzy controller designed in this paper can sufficiently satisfied the requirements of tension control in uncoiling process. Apparently the method improves the procedure of parameter adjustment in classical PID algorithm, which saves lots of work and makes control process more flexible. Up to now, the whole system has just been adjusted and tested in the laboratory, and the next target is to construct a more practical fuzzy control model to make sure that it can be applied to the real FFX system.

Figure 14 Flow chart of the fuzzy controlling program Adjusting and changing the load of the belt and tension dump roll can simulate different thickness of strip steel and the result is shown in table 2. Table 2 Comprehensive analysis of tension curve of controlling

6. References
[1] K.K. Nippon Kokan, New tension control method for hot strip mills, Trans. Iron Steel Inst, Japan, 1986 26(3), 256. [2] Shen Zhiqiang, Zou Jitao, Chen Tao, and Cao Changxiu, Applied research of the mathematic model for tension control, Journal of Huazhong Univ. of Sci.&Tech, Wu Han, 2007 35(12), 65-67. [3] G. Lia, and F. Janabi-Sharifib, Fuzzy looperless tension control for hot strip rolling, ELSEVIER, 2008 4(1). [4] Han Junfeng, and Li Yuhui, Fuzzy Control Technology, Chongqing Univ. Publisher, Chongqing, 2003. [5] Li Guoyong, Intelligence Control and Matlab realization, Electronics Industry Publisher, Beijing, 2007.

From table 2, it can be seen that the torque of each motor is continuously changed with the load changing. And when the pressure of the dump roll is 10N, which simulates the strip steel of moderate thickness in realistic uncoiling system, the system needs a proper tension to execute uncoiling, so the torque of pinch roll (Motor 1) is moderate, and the torque difference between the mandrel and the pinch roll is moderate. When the pressure is 5N, which simulates the thinner trip steel in the realistic uncoiling system, less tension is needed to execute uncoiling and the torque of pinch roll is small and the difference is small. When the pressure is 20N, which simulates the thickest strip steel in the realistic system, the system needs a very large torque to execute uncoiling, so the torque of pinch roll is large, and the torque difference is large too. From the tension curve of the system, it can be seen that the curve is relatively smooth and of no fluctuation, and finally lead to steadiness. This system

312