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Fixed-Order $ H_ {infty} $ Tension Control in the Unwinding Section of a Web

Handling System Using a Pendulum Dancer

Article  in  IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology · January 2012

DOI: 10.1109/TCST.2011.2107554 · Source: dx.doi.org

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 20, NO. 1, JANUARY 2012 173

Fixed-Order H Tension Control in the Unwinding Section of a Web Handling

System Using a Pendulum Dancer
Vincent Gassmann, Dominique Knittel, Prabhakar R. Pagilla, Member, IEEE, and Marie-Ange Bueno

Abstract—Flexible materials such as textiles, papers, polymers,

and metals are transported on rollers during their processing.
Maintaining web tension in the entire processing line under
changing web speed is a key factor in achieving good final product
quality. Many industrial applications use dancer position feed-
back to indirectly regulate tension. Although widely used in the
industry, pendulum dancers (rotational motion of the dancer
roller) have received very little attention in the literature com-
pared to linear ones (translational motion). The lack of clearly
identified controllers synthesis methods can thus be noticed, as
industry typically uses hand-tuned decentralized PI controllers.
An improved alternative based on methods is proposed in this
paper to provide a systematic framework. The focus in this study
is the unwind section of a processing line that contains a pendulum
dancer (PD). The nonlinear and linear phenomenological models
of the unwind section containing the PD are discussed first. The
position controller based on dancer position feedback is synthe-
sized using the standard approach with mixed sensitivity.
Because of the high order of the controllers synthesized with this
approach, techniques to generate reduced-order controllers are Fig. 1. Picture of the PD mechanism.
used to calculate a fixed-order controller resembling standard
industrial practice. The performance of the proposed controllers
is demonstrated by carrying out experiments on a large exper- they represent a convenient way of transporting and processing a
imental web handling platform containing four driven rollers, product from one form to another. Printing, coating, and drying
many idle rollers, and a PD in the unwind section. To the best of
our knowledge, these are the first published results of successful
are examples of operations that can be performed in different
application of an controller to a real plant containing a PD. sections of a web line. A web is usually described as any contin-
uous and flexible material whose width is significantly less than
Index Terms—Decentralized control, fixed-order control,
controller, pendulum dancer (PD), robust control application, its length and whose thickness is less than its width. Web ten-
roll-to-roll, web handling systems, web tension control. sion and speed are two key variables that need to be monitored
and controlled in order to achieve the expected final product
quality. One of the main objectives in web handling machinery
I. INTRODUCTION is to reach an expected web speed while maintaining the web
tension within a close tolerance band in the entire processing
T HE unwinder–winder systems (also called “roll-to-roll”
systems) handling web materials, such as textiles, papers,
polymers, or metals, are very common in the industry because
line. This tolerance depends obviously on the type of material
that has to be processed. It is common practice in industrial
web transport systems to use decentralized PI-type controllers.
Manuscript received February 01, 2010; revised September 01, 2010; Overviews of problems, solutions, and perspectives on the topic
accepted October 31, 2010. Manuscript received in final form January 15, of web dynamics control (especially web tension) are presented
2011. Date of publication February 22, 2011; date of current version December in [1]–[3]. However, recently, the processing industry has en-
14, 2011. Recommended by Associate Editor S. Varigonda. The work of V.
Gassmann was supported by the Graduate College “Mathematics, Information countered the need to answer the requirement of higher produc-
and Engineering Sciences,” University of Strasbourg. The work of D. Knittel tivity, increasing web speed, and the handling of thinner mate-
was supported by the French Ministry of Research under Grant ERT 08. The rials. Thus, more efficient control strategies have to be explored
work of P. R. Pagilla was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation
under Grant 854612. to improve tension control [4]–[8]. As web processing plants are
V. Gassmann and D. Knittel are with the Web Handling Research Group (ERT known as highly resonant systems with strong coupling between
Enroulement), University of Strasbourg, 67081 Strasbourg, France, and also the variables to control, the use of controllers has been in-
with the Laboratoire de Genie de la Conception, National Institute in Applied
Sciences (INSA), 67084 Strasbourg, France (e-mail: vgassmann@unistra.fr;
troduced to address the resonant effects (a bad regulation can
knittel@unistra.fr). result in web breaks or in web folds) while maintaining perfor-
P. R. Pagilla is with the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, mance [3], [4], [9]–[12]. In particular, the design of con-
Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078 USA (e-mail: pagilla@ok-
state.edu).
trollers has enabled to achieve better performances compared to
M.-A. Bueno is with the Laboratoire de Physique et Mecanique Tex- controllers [13] for such systems. These new approaches re-
tiles, University of Haute-Alsace, 68200 Mulhouse, France (e-mail: quire the knowledge of a plant dynamical model [1], [4], [14].
marie-ange.bueno@uha.fr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
Generally, web tension measurement is obtained in a span of
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. the processing line and is used as a feedback signal to a driven
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCST.2011.2107554 roller. The most commonly used measurement devices are load
1063-6536/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
174 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 20, NO. 1, JANUARY 2012
Fig. 2. Experimental web platform.
cells (LCs) and dancers. Both have been compared in [15]. Ten-
sion control is performed using direct measurement of web ten-
sion in the case of LCs. However, this paper will consider an
approach to tension control via the use of a pendulum dancer
(PD). Dancers are mobile mechanisms that enable a roll to move
according to one degree of freedom. Contrary to LCs, the use of
dancer mechanisms is an indirect method to ensure tension con-
trol. The variable that is regulated is not web tension, but the
position of a force-loaded dancer, which provides regulation of
tension indirectly: a desired force is applied to the dancer by
a pneumatic or hydraulic cylinder that is compensated by web
tension. During the unwinding–rewinding process, the pressure
in the cylinder remains constant, while the position feedback is
used to adjust the reference speed of the material roll. Usually,
web process line designers have recourse to dancer mechanisms
close to the unwinder and rewinder because they act naturally as
mechanical filters to attenuate various disturbances. These dis-
turbances are mainly due to eccentricity and noncircularity of
web material rolls. Mechanically, two kinds of dancer structures
are typically used: linear and PDs (a picture of the PD used in
this study is shown in Fig. 1). The first type has been studied in
the literature [16]–[18]. PDs seem to be widely used in industrial
processing plants because they are compact and convenient to
manufacture. Modeling of PD was considered in [19] and [20].
Since web handling systems are large-scale systems, it is
highly relevant to decompose the system into several sec-
tions with each subsystem containing only one actuator (i.e.,
one driven roller) and to perform decentralized control. The
emphasis of this paper is on the unwind section of a large
experimental platform containing four driven rollers, as shown
in Fig. 2. The roller labeled as “PD” in the unwind section is the
PD roller (picture also shown in Fig. 1). The angular position of
the PD is used as a feedback signal to provide a speed reference
correction for the unwind roll. Although many web tension
control applications using LCs can be referenced, the lack of
design methodology in the literature can be noticed in the case
of control with a PD. Industry is still widely using manually
tuned PID controllers, which can result in many issues, such
as performance degradation with slightly changing conditions,
tuning difficulties, and robustness problems.
Consequently, the study in this paper proposes a new design
methodology of using a single-input single-output (SISO)
tension controller with PD position as feedback variable to reg-
ulate web tension indirectly. The controller is designed for the
subsystem containing the PD based on a linear time-invariant
(LTI) system using the standard mixed sensitivity approach,
also called method [21]. One of the most well-known
disadvantages of the standard method, as implemented in
the classic algorithms, is the high order of the computed con-
troller, which is typically equal to the order of the system plus
the ones of the weighting functions. Consequently, it is often
very relevant to obtain a reduced or fixed-order controller, es-
pecially for industrial applications. On the one hand, the con-
troller order cannot always be reduced a posteriori while main-
taining stability and expected performance. On the other hand,
synthesis of fixed-order controllers can be typically formulated
as a nonsmooth and nonconvex problem. Nevertheless, consid-
erable progress has been made on this issue in the recent years
[22], [23] with the development of nonsmooth and nonconvex
optimization algorithms. These improvements enable the use of
approach, which is a good choice in designing low-order
controllers with robust performance that can be applied to de-
velop industrial control systems. A MATLAB package called
HIFOO ( fixed-order optimization) based on quasi-Newton
(BFGS), bundling, and gradient sampling has been released re-
cently [24] to perform fixed-order controller calculation using
local optimization techniques. This software has been used in
this paper for the reduced-order controller synthesis. The focus
will be on the first- and second-order controllers. Moreover, this
paper presents the first experimental results of controllers
applied successfully to the unwind section of a web handling
system using a PD (some preliminary simulation results were
given in [19]). These promising results also enable to conclude
on the achievement of some objectives of this study. The first
one is to provide a systematic model-based framework for con-
troller synthesis used in tension control via PDs. The second
main point is that the computed fixed-order controllers can be
implemented using the controller structures and software given
in real-time control systems.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II recalls the main
physical laws to model web handling systems. A model of the
PD is also presented. An LTI model of the unwind section is
derived in order to design the controller. Section III dis-
cusses the synthesis of full- and fixed-order controllers for
the unwind section with the PD. Finally, experimental results
are shown and discussed in Section IV for different controllers.
II. SYSTEM MODELING
The experimental platform of Fig. 2 is an example of a web
handling system that exhibits the classical layout of an indus-
GASSMANN et al.: FIXED-ORDER TENSION CONTROL IN THE UNWINDING SECTION OF A WEB HANDLING SYSTEM 175

trial processing line. Such a line is usually divided into several

subsections that are controlled independently either in tension
or speed. Each subsection contains a driven roller, some idle
rollers and web spans (a web span refers to the web between
two consecutive rollers). In such a subsection, the goal is to reg-
ulate web tension at the desired value while transporting the web
with a prescribed speed. A master speed roller is used to regulate
web speed over the entire processing line. The system in Fig. 2,
which has been used to implement the proposed controllers, is
composed of an unwinder, two intermediate driven rollers, and a
rewinder. Web tension regulation in the unwind zone is done by
using a PD and is the focus of this paper. Tension control is per-
formed using LC feedback in the Pull-Roll and Rewind sections
(PI controllers are used in these zones). The LC in the unwind
section is only used for monitoring web tension in the section.
The intermediate-driven rollers (denoted as S-Wrap Section) are
the master speed rollers.
The nonlinear model of a web transport system [4], [9] is built Fig. 3. PD sketch for modeling.
from the equations describing web tension behavior between
two consecutive rollers, the velocity of each roller, and the pen-
dulum position dynamics. Moreover, it is common to neglect
free roller dynamics in the development of a model because they
have only effects during transient states. This assumption is rea-
sonable and will be used in this paper as a first approach. A linear
model can then be derived from the nonlinear equations by as-
suming a nominal working point in tension, position, and speed.
Assuming the absence of slippage between the web and the roll,
the velocity of the th roll is given by torque balance on it

(1)
where is the angular velocity of the th roll,
is the web tension between the th and the th rolls,
corresponds to all the friction torques, is the roll inertia, and
is the roll radius. If the roller is driven, is the motor
torque ( is the torque reference voltage sent to the drive cal-
culator and is the ratio from reference voltage to torque, i.e.,
the current loop is approximated by the gain ); otherwise,
is zero. The calculation of web tension between two con-
secutive rollers is based on three laws: Hooke’s law, Coulomb’s
law, and the mass conservation law. The linear tension dynamics
is thereby expressed as follows [4], [9]:
Fig. 4. Dancer subsystem model.
the dancer and is calculated in order to achieve the expected web
tension . The relationship (3) that gives the angular position
dynamics of the dancer can be linearized assuming that the po-
sition remains very small (i.e., ).
Due to these fundamental laws in web handling systems mod-
eling, a simplified model of the “Unwind & Dancer Section”
(see Fig. 2), as represented in Fig. 4, will be used to compute
the position controller synthesis. This subsystem is composed
of the unwinder, the PD and its roller, and two web spans.

(2) III. TENSION CONTROL

where and are, respectively, the nominal web velocity and
tension, is the web length between the th and the th
rollers, and and stand for web elasticity and cross-sectional
area, respectively. The dancer angular position dynamics is de-
rived based on torque balance and can be expressed as
(3)
where corresponds to the angular position of the dancer. The
lengths and angles are taken according to the notations used in
the sketch of the PD shown in Fig. 3. and are dancer
total inertia and mass. is the force applied by a cylinder to
The typical control scheme for tension regulation in each sub-
system of an industrial plant is proposed in Fig. 5. is a scaling
factor that depends on unwinder radius and gear ratio between
the roller and the motor shaft. The control scheme is composed
of the following: an inner loop ensures speed control, whereas
an outer loop performs tension control, i.e., position control in
the case of a dancer. Note that the output of the position con-
troller of the outer loop is used to adjust speed reference of the
drive (this speed reference is the one used for the entire pro-
cessing line). Industrial web handling systems commonly use
two PI or PID controllers. For safety reasons, the inner speed
loop is generally inside the drive. The addition of a feedforward
term at the output of the speed controller provides improved
speed loop performance. This feedforward term is required to
176 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 20, NO. 1, JANUARY 2012

Fig. 6. H framework with the S=KS=T synthesis scheme.

Fig. 5. Dancer position control strategy.

function between exogenous inputs and and perfor-

compensate for roll inertia (and its variations) and frictions (i.e., mance outputs
static and dynamic frictions) and is, therefore, adaptive. The
calculation of this feedforward term has been explored in [7]
and [11]. Assuming that inertia and friction are compensated, (6)
the inner speed loop with its PI controller (proportional gain
and lead frequency ) is taken as a second-order transfer func- The weighting function is usually taken with a high gain
tion. According to Figs. 4 and 5, the unwinder subsystem at low frequency in order to reject low-frequency disturbances.
including the inner speed loop, can be formulated using the clas- The form of is as follows [26]:
sical state space model
(7)
(4)
where is the maximum peak magnitude of the sensitivity
is the desired frequency bandwidth, and
where is the state vector (note that
is the steady-state error allowed. A small value has been taken
and refer to the speed loop state variables), is
for so that it is sufficient to obtain a pole close to zero in
the system inputs, which are speed reference and cylinder force
the open loop with the controller . The main
in our case, and is the dancer position measurement. The
challenge in the tuning of lies in the choice of because
state matrices are detailed in the Appendix [see (13)–(15)].
it has to consider both the fastness of the closed-loop system
and the initial dynamics of the plant. Results that fulfill fastness
expectations are presented for rad/s. The weighting
A. Standard Controller Synthesis
function is used to avoid large control signals and to increase
The decentralized position SISO controller has been the roll-off of the controller output at high frequencies
first synthesized using the framework of Fig. 6 with output
(8)
weighting for the system [represented in the dashed box
in Fig. 5 and described by (4)]. The state-space solution of
the problem has been introduced in [25]. The system to The weighting function increases the roll-off of the system
control is augmented with weighting functions, which shape output at high frequencies. should be chosen in order to
the closed-loop behavior. The frequency-weighting functions model the disturbances created by the force applied to the dancer
, and appear in the closed-loop transfer matrix in an appropriate way. The results presented in this paper have
in the following manner: been obtained for taken equal to one, which makes the so-
lution more conservative.

(5) B. A Priori Reduced-Order Controller Synthesis

The controllers calculated with the standard approaches
as in [25] produce high-order controllers, e.g., order 10 in our
where is the sensitivity function, case. In many industrial applications, several issues often make
is the complementary sensitivity function, , consideration of low-order controller more relevant, e.g., to re-
and . is the dancer position reference and rep- duce the computation time of the control signals. Order reduc-
resents as a disturbance on the force that is applied by the tion could be performed a posteriori using balanced trunca-
cylinder on the dancer. and are, respectively, tion techniques [27]–[29], but it does not necessarily guarantee
the transfer functions between the control input and the mea- to keep the performance and to obtain the expected con-
surement output, and between the cylinder force and the system troller order. Consequently, it is more efficient to consider the
output. The problem consists of finding a stabilizing posi- fixed-order controller synthesis directly in the optimization
tion controller which minimizes the -norm of the transfer ensuring closed-loop performance. Hence, the problem can
GASSMANN et al.: FIXED-ORDER TENSION CONTROL IN THE UNWINDING SECTION OF A WEB HANDLING SYSTEM 177

be stated as follows. If you consider both the open-loop system

and a th-order controller defined as

(9)

the closed-loop system can then be expressed as [24 ]

(10)

The transfer function of the closed-loop system is defined in

(5). In order to determine the controller , the first step is to
stabilize the closed-loop system (10). Stabilization is ensured
when the spectral abscissa of the closed-loop system matrix is
strictly negative. The closed-loop system matrix is affine in the
controller state-space matrices. The second step is to minimize
the norm of the transfer function (5) between the inputs
and and the set of outputs . The main issue comes from the
fact that the design of fixed-order controller is a nonsmooth and
nonconvex problem.
In this paper, the problem is solved using nonconvex pro-
gramming, which guarantee local convergence only. The design
variables that have to be optimized are the controller state ma-
trices parameters (no Lyapunov function has to be determined).
Consequently, reducing the original plant order is not necessary,
since the number of design variables remains the same (e.g.,
4 for a first-order controller) whatever be the plant order. A
MATLAB package named hybrid algorithm for nonsmooth op-
timization (HANSO) [30] proposes a nonsmooth, nonconvex,
hybrid optimization algorithm, which mixes several optimiza-
tion techniques (quasi-Newton updating, bundling, and gradient
sampling). HANSO is at the core of another MATLAB package,
HIFOO, which is tailored at solving fixed-order controller de-
sign problems [24]. Our study will be focused on first- and
second-order controllers because they are similar to typical in-
dustrial controller structures.
IV. RESULTS
A. Experiment Description
Experiments were conducted to illustrate the effect of speed
reference changes on web tension with the proposed dancer
control strategies. The web materials used in the experiments
is Tyvek, which is a product made by Dupont. The product of
the elasticity of the web material and its cross-sectional area
is equal to 2200 N. During the experiments, the only other
section, where web tension is controlled is the rewind zone using
a basic industrial PI controller. Web tension is not regulated in
the Pull-Roll section; the roller is only driven by a speed loop
and can, therefore, be considered as a secondary master speed
roller.
The web line is run for reference speeds that vary between
100 and 300 ft/min (approximately 30 and 92 m/min). The ap-
plied air pressure inside the cylinder of the PD corresponds to a
reference web tension of 21 lbf ( N), if the dancer remains
H
Fig. 7. Experimental results for the full-order controller. (a) Dancer posi-
tion. (b) Unwind tension. (c) Line speed (unwinder linear speed measurement).
at its expected vertical position. Web tension in the unwind sec-
tion is monitored using the available LCs mounted on a roller
in the Unwind & Dancer Section (see Fig. 2). This LC provides
a direct measurement of web tension in the unwind section for
academic research. In industrial practice, generally a LC roller
is not used when tension control is done using a dancer mecha-
nism.
The following sequence is used to generate the data plotted
in the figures containing the results. By considering the ex-
ample of Fig. 7, the desired air pressure is first commanded
into the cylinder, which pushes the cylinder to the extreme po-
sition ( ) because the web is slack (zero tension). Second
(at s), the outer dancer position loop for the unwind roll
(see Fig. 5 ) is closed with dancer position feedback. This reg-
ulates the dancer position to 0 (vertical down position for the
roller), which results in tension regulation at the level of 20 lbf.
Third (at s), the velocity reference is changed from 0
to 100 ft/min (a steep S-profile is used in the industry for refer-
ence speed changes and is mimicked in these experiments also).
Subsequently, the line speed follows the profile, as shown in
Fig. 7(c).
B. Experimental Results for the Full-Order Controller
The full-order controller has been implemented on the
experimental setup shown in Fig. 2 by its discrete state-space
representation using Tustin’s approximation and a sampling pe-
riod of 10 ms. Experimental results are shown in Fig. 7. Data
178 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 20, NO. 1, JANUARY 2012

TABLE I
COMPARISON OF THE CONTROLLERS

Fig. 8. Sliding FFT of unwinding tension feedback.

show that the dancer position and tension signals are maintained
close to their reference values despite large changes in the line
speed. As a comparison, the PI controllers used in industrial ap-
plications can be tuned to tolerate position deviation up to sev-
eral degrees regarding speed changes and other disturbances de-
pending on the material that has to be processed (a comparison
is given in Table I for our application). Consequently, the ref-
erence-tracking performances that have been achieved by the
proposed controller are suitable with the industrial applications
requiring a very high accuracy.
Nevertheless, one can observe some small oscillations around
the reference values for both the dancer position and web ten-
sion signals. A time--frequency analysis (fast Fourier transform
(FFT) with sliding window) of web tension feedback signal is H
Fig. 9. Experimental results for the first-order controller. (a) Dancer posi-
performed in Fig. 8. The frequency analysis is done for a time tion. (b) Unwind tension ( H controller). (c) Unwind tension (PI controller).
(d) Line speed (unwinder linear speed measurement).
period between 70 and 220 s of the tension measurement data
proposed in Fig. 7(b), i.e., when the line is running. The dashed
line in Fig. 8 is related to the speed profile of Fig. 7(c) and en- the entire processing line. This effect occurs irrespective of the
ables to track the evolution of a specific frequency contained in type of controller used for the regulation, and the value of the
the spectrum depending on time and speed. Consequently, these offset depends slightly on speed because of dynamic friction.
oscillations can be expressed as a function of line speed and Nevertheless, if an expected web tension has to be reached in a
are primarily caused due to roller eccentricity and out-of-round- specific zone of the unwinder section, an additional feedforward
ness. Despite well-identified disturbance frequencies, the issue term based on a model of the friction can be used to compensate
has not been addressed in the synthesis formulation, since for this offset (see [11]).
it is well-known that disturbance rejection cannot be achieved
with a single reduced-order controller, especially when the dis- C. Experimental Results for the Reduced-Order Controllers
turbance is in low frequencies.
A second phenomenon can be observed on the tension re- The first- and second-order controllers have been imple-
sponse. The average values of web tension when the line is mented on the experimental setup under their discrete transfer
stopped and when the line is running are different. This offset function forms (sampling period of 10 ms). The experimental
is due to static and dynamic friction of the rollers on their shaft, results are shown in Figs. 9 and 10, respectively. The weighting
and illustrates the role played by idle rollers on web tension over functions used for the synthesis are slightly adjusted in each
GASSMANN et al.: FIXED-ORDER TENSION CONTROL IN THE UNWINDING SECTION OF A WEB HANDLING SYSTEM
Fig. 10. Experimental results for the second-order H controller. (a) Dancer
position. (b) Unwind tension. (c) Line speed (unwinder linear speed measure-
ment).
case. Furthermore, the proposed first-order controller is com-
pared in Fig. 9 with the manually tuned PI controller tradition-
ally used in this processing line.
In order to compare the proposed controllers, we define
two criteria to evaluate their performances. The first criterion is
taken as follows:
(11)
The standard integral of absolute error (IAE) [31] index is mod-
ified to provide a value of the criterion per unit of time. It is
chosen to evaluate the reference-tracking behavior of the con-
trollers. The second index determines the maximum deviation
(in degrees) of the PD position compared to its reference
(12)
This second criterion is used to evaluate the decoupling abilities
of the controllers, i.e., the way that the controllers compete when
large speed variations occur. The values of these criteria are
presented in Table I for different controllers. The performances
of the second-order controller have slightly decreased compared
to the full-order controller. The similarities between these two
controllers were foreseeable after plotting the Hankel singular
values of the full-order controller (see Fig. 11). This statement
proves that the proposed approach is competitive with methods
179
Fig. 11. Hankel singular value decomposition of the full-order controller.
using balanced truncation. Moreover, it has the advantages to
guarantee the closed-loop stability, the performance, and
the expected controller order.
The coupling between line speed and dancer position and be-
tween line speed and web tension remains very small, even in
the case of large velocity changes (see Fig. 10(a) for dancer
position and Fig. 10(b) for web tension). On the contrary, the
coupling between dancer position and line speed appears, as
expected, more significantly in the case of the first-order con-
troller [seeFig. 9(a)]. Despite this higher coupling, web tension
response [see Fig. 9(b)] is maintained. The amplitude of the os-
cillations around the average value of web tension when the line
is running seems to be slightly larger in the case of the first-order
controller. Although the full-order controller outperforms
the PI controller by a large margin, one can still make the case
for developing a reduced-order controller, as real-time resources
are limited in many industrial control systems. Particularly, the
performance obtained with the second-order controller is sim-
ilar to the full-order one. Performance tends to decrease more
significantly for the first-order controller, but still outperforms
the conventional PI. For an industrial application, the first-order
controller would be suitable in most cases. Nevertheless, if
higher accuracy and better decoupling are required, the order of
the controller has to be increased. For such requirements, results
prove that the controller should be at least of order 2.
V. CONCLUSION
A decentralized fixed-order control strategy applied to a
large-scale web handling system was proposed in this paper.
The focus was on fixed-order control applied to web
tension regulation in the unwind section of a large experimental
web platform using a PD. The controller has been synthe-
sized based on a fully distributed control strategy assuming
no interaction between the unwind section and the rest of the
processing line. A linear state-space model of the unwinding
section containing the PD has then been derived to compute
the SISO position controllers. The synthesis is car-
ried out using the standard mixed sensitivity approach. The
cases not only of a full-order controller (order 10), but also
of first- and second-order regulators, have been investigated.
Experimental results were carried out successfully on a large
experimental platform. These results illustrate the efficiency
of each controller synthesized to perform web tension control
in the unwind section. Compared to a conventional PI con-
troller, performance has been substantially improved. It has
been observed that the performance decreases slightly with the
reduction of the order of the controller, especially for the first
180 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 20, NO. 1, JANUARY 2012
order. The results obtained with the proposed controllers are
suitable with industrial applications in terms of fastness and
accuracy.
In future research, the air cylinder dynamics has to be mod-
eled so that the weighting function could be adjusted more
precisely. A study could also be led on the robustness of the pro-
posed controllers when using various material webs.
APPENDIX
STATE-SPACE REPRESENTATION
The matrices used in the state-space representation of the re-
lationship (4) are given in the following equations:
(13)
(14)
(15)
The state vector, the input vector, and the output vector are
given in Section III. For this stable plant, all the model parame-
ters are either measured or calculated. Note that denotes the
total reference of the inner speed loop, which is the addition
of the web speed reference for the entire line and the ad-
justment term coming from the dancer position controller.
Some coefficients of the matrices , and do not appear in
the same way in the relationships used to build this model, but
they have only been used to simplify the notation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
V. Gassmann would like to thank the WHRC members at Ok-
lahoma State University for their cordial welcome. The authors
would like to thank the HIFOO developers.
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