Paper Basis Weight Control in Paper Mill using Dead Time Approximation and Dead Time Compensation Techniques

This work is centered on the paper making process in an industrial paper mill. There exist plenty of sub-processes in a paper mill for transformation of raw material to finished product. A particular process that is taken up in this research is paper basis weight control process, which is very important for good quality paper production. But the controller design for this process is very challenging due to the involvement of severe dead time value, which in addition to delaying the control output, makes the control system unstable. So, two different approaches are used here, in MATLAB, for controller design, one is the dead time approximation using Padé approximation technique and the other is dead time compensation using Smith predictor technique. Hence, the performance of the designed control systems is compared.