Fuzzy supervisory control of air flow and temperature in industrial tunnel furnaces

In tunnel-type industrial furnaces there are various subsystems concerning either the temperature regulation or the air flow and pressure. These subsystems are usually controlled by conventional techniques and controllers offering simply an acceptable operation of the whole system. This paper presents design and implementation of a fuzzy control scheme for supervising coordination of the individual subsystems in order to achieve the desired conditions and improve the overall operation of the industrial furnace. The proposed control structure can be easily applied to the process environment and the implementation may be realized directly on a programmable logic controller