Variable Structure System for Electric Arc Furnace Control

Variable structure controllers that can be effectively applied to control an electric arc furnace are investigated in this paper. A gereral formulation and solution of the variable structure system design problem is presented together with some guidlines for the choice of a suitable model following. A state space reduction method is applied to reduce the dominant dynamic order and hence simplify the design process. The effects of switching surface, modelling, gain polarity and magnitude are discussed.