Modelling and control of a wire coating process

In this paper the wire coating process is investigated and it is shown that extrudate viscosity is a key parameter in the control of the physical characteristics of the polymer coating. Modelling of a plasticating extruder is undertaken and schemes for the control of extrudate viscosity are investigated. It has been shown that both NARMAX and neural network models are capable of capturing the nonlinear dynamics exhibited by a plasticating extruder. The models have only been limited in there applicability due to limitations in the training data set and a lack of experimental data to fully model the relationship between process dead time and process variables.