SELF-TUNING FUZZY CONTROL OF A ROTARY DRYER

Abstract Drying, especially rotary drying is without doubt one of the oldest and most common unit operations in industries. It is a very complex non-linear process including the movement of solids in addition to thermal drying. This means that both the modelling and control of a rotary dryer is difficult with conventional methods. The aim of this research was to improve dryer control by developing control systems based on self-tuning PID-type fuzzy logic controllers. The behaviour of the control systems has been tested with simulations based on the model of a pilot plant dryer located in the Control Engineering Laboratory at the University of Oulu. The control results have been compared ach…