An innovative cost effective approach towards tension control in automated filament winding composite manufacturing

When designing a low cost filament winding machine, one of the most challenging tasks is to design an inexpensive and effective winder tension control. Applying and maintaining an appropriate fiber tension when filament winding a composite part is a complex nonlinear process. The tension in fiber is dependent on number of factors, such as friction, elastic characteristics of the fiber and the winding angle. In this paper, a novel actuation system for tension controlling fibers is mathematically modeled. Then a comparison between the conventional PI controller and a Mamdani type Fuzzy inference based control system is proposed. In this process a novel technique for making PI controller capable of handling known nonlinearities in the system is introduced.