Indirect self-tuning regulator design for an industrial weigh belt feeder

An industrial weigh belt feeder is used to transport solid materials into a manufacturing process at a constant feedrate. It exhibits nonlinear behavior because of motor friction, saturation, and quantization noise in the sensor. Adaptive control tries to accommodate the system and its environment and to change controller behavior when the plant or disturbances change. Thus, it compensates for certain nonlinearities. The paper designs and implements an indirect self-tuning regulator for an industrial weigh belt feeder. Implementation issues are discussed and experimental results show the effectiveness of the adaptive controller for several different reference inputs.