DEVELOPMENT OF A FUZZY LOGIC CONTROLLER FOR ECM PROCESS

Abstract

The application of Electro Chemical Machining (ECM) to produce very convoluted shapes and high surface quality on products made from exotic alloys has significantly increased in recent years. Such applications require more precision, accuracy and sophistication which call for better controlled operations. In conjunction with this for obtaining quality ECMed surfaces and better process productivity, it is required to take decision on several process variables whose behavior are not exactly and completely known in advance. These parameters are interdependent and their behavior is difficult to model mathematically. To address these problems we have developed a model which can prognosticate performance characteristics of the process for a given set of input parameters and simultaneously a controller has been constructed and realized in hardware to respond to the dynamic process variations and tune the input parameters accordingly. Correlation between input and output parameters is vague, uncertain and has ambiguity associated with and hence concept of fuzzy set theory can best deal with such situation. Applications of Fuzzy logic controller have been used in the present work to predict the process ,performance characteristics beforehand as well as to control the process gap variations online.