A self-tuning PI decentralized control of web transport system

In a web transport system, the velocity and tension of web are in general controlled by using a decentralized structure where the interference force exists between neighboring subsystems. This paper shows a self-tuning decentralized control system design using the overlapping decomposition method, and discusses the experimental results. The self-tuning function is composed of the particle swarm optimization block to estimate the system parameters and the control input calculation block working based on the generalized minimum variance criterion. The experimental system includes 12 rolls, 4 motors, and 4 tension sensors. The experimental results show that the PSO is successfully executed within a sampling time and that we had a satisfactory performance in the presence of mutual interactions. Besides, there are only two control system parameters to be specified by the designers.