Fuzzy Logic and PD Control Strategies of a Three-Phase Electric Arc Furnace

This paper presents a fuzzy control and a conventional proportional derivative control for the electrode positioning system of a three-phase electric arc furnace. Generally, it is necessary to maintain constant the arc lengths for these kinds of furnaces. The two control strategies proposed in this paper regulates the current of the electric arc because arc length depends by the electric arc current. In order to do this, a new model of the electric arc developed by the authors of this paper was used. This paper illustrates a comparison of the performance analysis of a conventional PD controller and a fuzzy based intelligent controller. The fuzzy intelligent based controller has two inputs and one output. The whole systems are simulated by using of Matlab/Simulink software. These systems are tested when applying a step disturbance in the process, when applying a sequence of step disturbances and when applying a second step disturbance before being compensate the effect of another disturbance. The responses of the closed-loop systems illustrates that the proposed fuzzy controller has better dynamic performance, rapidity and good robustness as compared to the proposed PD controller.