Control technology applied to glass level regulation

Metal line regulation is one of the fundamental control problems in continuous glass melting and delivery to forming. This problem is generalized into a material transport system with a constant discharge flow rate, described using an open-loop unstable process model with dead time, time-varying parameters, load disturbances, and measurement noise. Regulation involves matching the raw-material charging rate of the melter to the forming molten glass delivery rate, so that a constant glass hydrostatic head is maintained in the process. An adaptive control strategy is described for this plant. It accommodates measurement uncertainty through filtering, time-varying plant parameters through online identification and explicit controller tuning, and dead time through a Smith-predictor-based scheme modified to accommodate delay variation and unstable open-loop process behavior