Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The large class of multi-motor and multi-mass systems includes robots, web handling equipments, automated vehicle transportation systems, etc. Handling disturbances in tightly coupled systems requires taking into account additional criteria as compared to single motor systems, e.g. in a winder subject to voltage fluctuations, the motors must not only be kept in operation but also maintain the integrity and quality of the product. The main objective of the program is to contribute to the development of control methods and strategies based on energetic characterization of electromechanical systems to improve their overall performance. The main system under study is a web handling system, more precisely a winder as used in many industries: paper, plastic, metal ... Efficient rejection of disturbances is very important to these industries since they can cause breakage, shutdowns or degradation of the product (e.g. wrinkles), henceforth cause rejects or loss of value of the production. Improving motor drive performance in presence of power supply variations, compensation or attenuation of the effect of friction and of air entrainment in winders and efficient control of apparatus to reject disturbances are means that will be researched in this program to improve efficiency of these machines. The control laws and compensation techniques will be validated on two systems: an autonomous vehicle network to demonstrate some concepts and control structures, and an industrial winder for final proof of concept. This work will result in development of new knowledge, and better understanding and control of complex systems. Improved performance and lower sensitivity to external disturbances will benefit industries that use multi-drive systems. To illustrate the potential impact, rejects in some industries are as high as 30% and studies have shown that a system interruption caused by supply disturbances, in particular voltage sags, can cost between 10k$ and 1M$US.