Experimental tests of fuzzy logical temperature controller of an electric resistance chamber furnace

Abstract

The paper presents an innovated hardware and software platform for the implementation of the fuzzy controller for
temperature and temperature slope change in an electric resistance chamber furnace. The point of this paper is to present the modern
hardware and software tools that we used to lift up the base for continuation of the research done in the laboratory for electrical
heating of Faculty of electrical engineering, University of Belgrade, more than 15 years ago. In that period, also the robustness of
control in respect to the amount of load in the furnace was investigated. This paper focuses to the further investigation of the
robustness. More precisely, experiments were performed to study if the controller can be applied as "plug and play controller", i.e. if
the controller can be applied without additional tuning on another furnace with the similar construction in respect to the one where the
fuzzy controller is tuned. The tests on two electric chamber furnaces with different rated power and volumes confirm the "plug and
play controller" principal is realistic.