Design of a virtual laboratory environment for a water bath temperature control system

In technical education, laboratory components comprise as an essential part, without it engineering education remains incomplete. Experiments conducted on laboratory equipments lend a practical touch to the theoretical knowledge acquired by the students. However, setting up a specialized laboratory consisting of sophisticated and expensive equipments is an unaffordable for many universities and engineering colleges. Therefore, by developing virtual experiments, sharing of specific and expensive equipment among institution is made much easier, as it can be used from any place with secure and controlled access. In this project, the system is developed using LABVIEW 8.6. This project consists of three stages. The first stage is hardware development, which involves construction of interface circuit to allow communication between plant and computer. The second stage is to build the Fuzzy Logic Controller using LABVIEW software, where fuzzy set and rulebase are applied. The final stage is to publish the GUI module onto the web for real-time remote control

A Water Bath Control System in a Virtual Laboratory Environment

In this paper, the development of a water bath control system in a virtual laboratory environment is discussed. The system proposed is developed using LABVIEW 8.6. This project consists of three stages. The first stage is hardware development, which involves construction of interface circuit to allow communication between plant and computer. The second stage is to build the Fuzzy Logic Controller using LABVIEW software, where fuzzy set and rule base are applied. The final stage is to publish the GUI module onto the web for real-time remote control. An internet based GUI module environment of a water bath temperature control system has successfully been developed using LABVIEW software and published onto the web where it can be fully controlled using Fuzzy Logic Controller developed, and monitored by any user despite of their geographical locations, as long as they have computers with web browsers and internet connection. Thus, this will assure a better and easier understanding of certain subjects, especially control system. With such a facility, laboratory resources can be shared online, laboratory experiments can be carried out away from the site as well as outside the official working hour, and the control subject can be taught in a more meaningful and effective manner to the students

Enhanced Nonlinear PID Controller for Positioning Control of Maglev System

Magnetic levitation (maglev) is a way of using electromagnetic fields to levitate objects without any noise or the need for petrol or air. Due to its highly nonlinear and unstable behavior, numerous control solutions have been proposed to overcome it. However, most of them still acquire precise dynamic model parameters, or deep understanding of control theory. To account the complexity in the design procedure, a practical controller consists of classical and modern control approaches are proposed. This chapter presents a practical controller for high positioning performance of a magnetic levitation system. Three strategies of the proposed controller where the PI-PD controller is to enhance transient response, the model-based feedforward control (FF) is incorporated with the PI-PD controller to enhance the overshoot reduction characteristic in attaining a better transient response, and lastly the disturbance compensator (Kz) is integrated as an additional feedback element to reduce the sensitivity function magnitude for robustness enhancement. The proposed controller - FF PI-PD + Kz has a simple and straightforward design procedure. The usefulness of the proposed controller is evaluated experimentally

Development and Modeling of Water Tank System using System Identification Method

This paper presents the development and modeling of Water Tank System (WTS) for temperature control using system identification technique. The WTS consists of the tank with 30 liter water, a stirrer, heater and thermocouple was powered by 240VDC and the system run by LabView software. The stirrer used to stabilize the water temperature that installed on the top cover of the WTS. In this project, a prototype of the WTS will be developed first. The WTS will be tested on an open loop system to obtain measured input-output signals. Input and output signals from the system are recorded and analyzed to infer a model. Then, system identification toolbox in MATLAB will be applied to generate a model of the WTS. The experimental testing of WTS only considered in temperature control. The modeling obtained will be used to design the a suitable controller for temperature control. The most crucial issue is the control system. It is needed for the WTS to perform the desired temperature setting. The objective of this project is to reduce or eliminate the overshoot of system response from temperature setting. The conventional controller PID and Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) will be used to control the temperature so that the temperature will maintain its desired temperature. The result shows that FLC is the better performance of system response in term of overshoot and oscillation

Development of Fuzzy Logic Water Bath Temperature Controller using MATLAB

In this paper, the development of a water bath temperature system to control the liquid’s temperature in the water bath will be presented. In order to develop the water bath temperature control system, MATLAB fuzzy logic toolbox will be utilized. The Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) is designed to control water temperature based on the input acquired from the thermal transducer sensor. The inference engines that are used are; Maxmin (Mamdani) method and centre of gravity technique for defuzzification. The 4 x 4 matrix rules for the controller will be used in this project. In addition, the USB NI-DAQ card will be used as xPC target to link the MATLAB software and real time application. The real time output temperature is validated based on the simulation’s temperature which is initially set by user. It can be concluded the performance of real time study is in par with the simulation result

Comparison of depth control form surface and bottom set point of an unmanned underwater remotely operated vehicle using PID controller

This paper investigates the depth control of an Unmanned Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) based on ballast tank system using conventional PID controller. The PID Controller is applied to control the depth of the ROV from two different reference points, from the surface and from the seafloor. The concept of ballast tank system selected is piston tank type. Two different sensors are selected, which is pressure sensor for measurement from the surface, and sonar sensor for measurement from the bottom. Control method from both references point are investigated and compared to find out which feedback reference points are more appropriate in different conditions. The implementation phase will be verified through MATLAB Simulink platform. The verified algorithms will then be tested on the actual prototype ROV. And also the prospect of automated the vertical movement of a ROV

Control of Automatic Food Drive-Through System using Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)

This project is about automatic control for food drive through system controlled via Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and this system consists of food drive through with two lanes and no human operator is required to operate this food drive through. The difference of this automatic control drive through system compared with the current drive through system is the current system required a few operators to operate the system. This automatic control drive through system is fully operated by machine, like order and payment machine and conveyor which deliver the food while human only needed and involved only to prepare the food. Since there are two lanes involved in this system, the machine installed has two order and payment machines, two ticket verification machines, two conveyors which connect to the kitchen and four sensors to detect the vehicles

Stopwatch Verification Platform The Development Of An Automated Device For Stopwatch Calibration

Stopwatch is designed to quantify the elapses time between the start activation and deactivation. To ensure the precision of the time taken, calibration of the device is essential. National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) has provide complete guidelines on the stopwatch and timer calibration. However, the standards guidelines usually use manual calibration personnel hence may possibly cause inefficiency for calibration works. The 'Stopwatch Verification Platform' is a prototype aimed to replace the manual handling of digital stopwatch calibration with an automated timer-controlled device, without interfering with NIST recommended practice. The 'Stopwatch Verification Platform' is able to automatically trigger start and stop the reference and test stopwatches by integrating with precise timer controller and specific relay connections. The timer controller circuitry is integrated with the reference stopwatch circuitry, with 0.001 second resolutionIt is capable in verifying more units of stopwatches by using one reference. The measurement procedures do not contradict with the NIST recommended practice. This prototype does not alter the uncertainties calculation because it is a well-developed standard formula which is set by international standard