Extruder melt temperature control with fuzzy logic

In polymer extrusion, the delivery of a melt which is homogenous in composition and temperature is paramount for achieving high quality extruded products. However, advancements in process control are required to reduce temperature variations across the melt flow which can result in poor product quality. The majority of thermal monitoring methods provide only low accuracy point/bulk melt temperature measurements and cause poor controller performance. Furthermore, the most common conventional proportional-integral-derivative controllers seem to be incapable of performing well over the nonlinear operating region. This paper presents a model-based fuzzy control approach to reduce the die melt temperature variations across the melt flow while achieving desired average die melt temperature. Simulation results confirm the efficacy of the proposed controller.