Sliding Mode Control of an Infrared Heating System for Moving Films

In this paper, a temperature regulation system is described for the heating of a thermoplastic composite film using infrared energy. A relatively new compensation technique, sliding mode control, is used to develop the process control laws of the system. Because the plant dynamics are a function of the feedrate, lead-lag filter compensation, representative of many off-the-shelf controls, provides unsatisfactory temperature regulation when film feedrate variations are large. Experimental results indicate that sliding mode control regulates the tape temperature to within 30 °F of a 700 °F set point under an acceleration of 20 in/sec/sec.