from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Nowadays, automatization is widespread in all areas of human endeavor because it reduces physical and psychological strain, improves production, and increases economic and environmental benefits in the industry. In the field of controlled machine aggregates of technological processes, an essential element of automation is automatic control. The quality of automatic control always depends on the controller parameter settings of the given system. Particularly in the metallurgical industry, the controller's optimal setting is critical because even minor deviations from the optimum can lead to substantial financial losses, deterioration in product quality, and adverse effects on the environment. To ensure quality setting, a sufficient mathematical description of the controlled system is needed. A variety of methods and commercial applications have been developed for the identification of dynamic systems and the setting of controller parameters. Nevertheless, the use of these hi-tech programs requires skilled operators, and their training represents a considerable financial and time burden. Besides, the acquisition of these programs is costly, especially for schools. Therefore, it is appropriate for teaching purposes and technical practice to create a suitable alternative using a common type of computer software such as MS Excel, a standard tool in many schools and work places. This paper presents how to identify controlled systems and optimally set the controllers using MS Excel, namely, its add-in Solver, based on the data of measured transition functions describing typical metallurgical aggregates. Such an approach's main benefit is that the potential user does not know the programming code that identifies the controlled systems and adjusts the controllers' optimal settings.
Keywords: Microsoft Excel, identification of controlled system in metallurgy, controller settings© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.