Adaptive control of flow progression in resin transfer molding

Control of flow progression to achieve a void-free mold filling is an important task in the resin transfer molding process. This paper presents an adaptive control method to control the flow front velocity by tracking a desired flow front location. The parameter estimation is used for on-line modeling. The input-output model of RTM makes use of lineal sensors for measuring the resin flow front. Several models of varying complexity are examined in this paper. The proper selection of model structure is important for the adaptive controller to achieve accurate tracking of the desired trajectory. Simulation results suggest that the control performance can be improved by selecting a proper model structure. Furthermore, it is found that nonlinear input-output models or the models with more undetermined parameters may not offer much advantage over simple linear models.