Design of a robust controller for a grinding system

Grinding is a process that is often used in the manufacture of precision components. Variations in position, velocity, and force trajectories can affect part quality by changing part surface finish, geometry, and process material removal rate. Thus, controlling the position, velocity, and force is critical to achieving a high quality product from the grinding process. In designing a compensator for a robust force controlled grinding system, several constraints must be considered. It is critical that the normal grinding force is decoupled from the tangential feed velocity of the system. Therefore, two separate control loops are designed; a standard feed velocity loop and a force loop. Besides decoupling the force and velocity, a variety of other system performance specifications must be achieved. To aid in the design of the control loops, several parametric plots are used to visualize the effects of various control parameters on the closed-loop system dynamics as well as the coupling of the two loops.