Average Speed Control of Reciprocating Machinery

This paper introduces average speed control (ASC), a novel way of controlling heavy-duty reciprocating machinery, such as weaving machines. Its main goal is to reduce the power consumption of such machine, by only regulating their average speed, and thus allowing for instantaneous drive speed fluctuations. Its basic structure combines a linear phase FIR-filter, which calculates a moving average, with a low-bandwidth PI controller. The paper also discusses an extension of the basic controller. That is a feedforward algorithm in order to meet the stringent transient behavior specifications for a weaving machine. Validation by means of simulations and experiments show that the controller meets all specifications