Self-tuning curing oven control

Abstract

Certain modern materials used in manufacturing require a specific temperature profile during the curing process to produce the desired characteristics (such as hardness). Classically, to obtain optimum control of an oven, a series of trials should be embarked on to accurately determine the coefficients of the regulator. This paper proposes a method to automatically determine the optimum parameters of the controller during the first heating process. The method has been implemented and validated in a small curing oven (3 kW). The step response and steady state error obtained were acceptable.