Control of Out-Flow Quantity from Hopper

In this paper, we discuss the control of out-flow quantity of a known amount of granular material from a hopper. Generally, there are many kinds of stochastic disturbance in the processes handling granules. For such processes, it is difficult to obtain a good performance by using conventional control schemes. Therefore, adaptive control algorithms which can operate in a deterministic or a stochastic enviroment are applied to the hopper system. For the control algorithm, six kinds of adaptive algorithms were used and the behaviours of those algorithms in tracking and regulation were examined. As for the results, it is shown that the self-tuning regulator, which can operate in a deterministic environment as a MRAC with desired performance and in a stochastic environment as a self-tuning regulator with desired performance, is more robust and very useful for the processes handling granules.