Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2014) 71:153163
DOI 10.1007/s00170-013-5400-4
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Fuzzy decoupling to reduce propagation of tension
disturbances in roll-to-roll system
Ganeshthangaraj Ponniah & Muhammad Zubair &
Yang-Hoi Doh & Kyung-Hyun Choi
Received: 28 January 2012 / Accepted: 3 October 2013 / Published online: 21 November 2013
# Springer-Verlag London 2013
Abstract Control of web tension is crucial for maintaining
quality of products processed on roll-to-roll (R2R) system. An
R2R system can be divided into different tension spans which
interact with each other. But converting industries tend to
neglect these interactions and use decentralized single-input
single-output (SISO) control approaches to deal with tension
control. Multi-inputmulti-output approaches have been re-
ported in literatures but are practically not in use. Interaction
between the various tension spans is unavoidable as they are
all connected by a single web. Disturbances produced in a
span tend to travel further downstream along the direction of
web travel. When the number of spans is less or the distur-
bance amplitudes are small, this does not present a big chal-
lenge and simple SISO control is sufficient. But when the
amplitudes of disturbances produced in processing is large
as is the case with printed electronicsor the number of spans
is large or both, then the interactions cannot be neglected. R2R-
based offset printers have the potential for mass production of
precision-printed electronics. In this paper, a fuzzy logic-based
hybrid approach has been followed that specifically targets the
printed electronics industry and this method considerably
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article
(doi:10.1007/s00170-013-5400-4) contains supplementary material,
which is available to authorized users.
G. Ponniah : M. Zubair : K.<H. Choi (*)
School of Mechatronics engineering, Jeju National University,
Jeju-si, Jeju-do, South Korea 690756
e-mail: amm@jejunu.ac.kr
G. Ponniah
e-mail: ganeshthangaraj@hotmail.com
M. Zubair
e-mail: zubairaw@yahoo.com
Y.<H. Doh
School of Electronics engineering, Jeju National University,
Jeju-si, Jeju-do, South Korea 690756
e-mail: yhdoh@jejunu.ac.kr
reduces the interactions. The algorithm has been designed such
that it takes information from previous span to reduce the
propagation of tension disturbances to the given span. This
has been achieved through online computation of correlation
coefficient and reducing the interaction through fuzzy feed-
back control.
Keywords Roll-to-roll system . Offset printed electronics .
Fuzzy tension control . Self-tuning . Disturbance propagation
1 Introduction
The web handling system also known as the roll-to-roll system
is a mass production and processing tool used to process mate-
rial in the form of web film, paper, fabric, etc. Figure 1a shows
the R2R system used during experiments for this paper. It is
made up of six spindles driven by servo motors which are
housed on the machine frame. The motors transport web
which in this case is made of poly ethylene terephthalate
(PET)from a roll of web and processes itoffset printing
and then rewinds it. During this travel from the un-wind to the
re-wind section, the web has to be maintained at a precise
tension. There are numerous idle rollers to guide the web
through the machine. Also, there are load cells that give
feedback of web tension. The whole system is controlled via
a PXI system. The overall schematic representation of the
machine configuration is shown in Fig. 1b. Figure 1c shows
the block diagram of conventional control architecture. The
load cell measures the tension in a given span. T1 through T4
are tensions of the four spans. This data is collected in a PXI
where it is processed and torque output is sent out to the servo
packs. Offset printing is a promising technology for printed
electronics. When it is used along with R2R system, the
printed electronics can be mass produced. Offset printing
system used in printed electronics is distinct from that used
for printed media. It introduces disturbances into the R2R
154 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2014) 71:153163

Out-feed nip
In-feed nip

rewind
Unwind
Offset printer

Fig. 1 a R2R system. b Schematic representation of R2R system. c Conventional control architecture
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2014) 71:153163
system. These disturbances tend to travel further downstream. In
the pilot R2R system shown in Fig. 1a, only one printing system
exists but in a full electronics printing system there would be a
series of offset printing units to print consecutive layers and
these disturbances will tend to grow with every printing step.
Conventional control architecture as shown in Fig. 1c is ill
equipped to deal with this sort of problem. Hence, a new
hybrid fuzzy control system has been implemented in this
paper that in a sense decouples the control of the tension spans.
Web handling technology has been in use for a long time
and web tension control, which is its essence, has been dealt
with using several techniques. Web tension has been controlled
in [17] using different techniques ranging from to neural nets
[1] to fuzzy logic [4]. Reference [2] uses a dancer system which
is in fact a complex electromechanical device to implement
feedback tension control, independent of the primary driven
rolls. They may be active or passive, i.e., either open loop or
closed loop, they may act as sensors or actuators or both.
Reference [2] has compared active and passive dancer perfor-
mance. Reference [3] has taken an unconventional approach to
tension control by using an observer in place of the open loop
or load cell-based tension control. In [2, 3, 7], inertia of the rolls
in their work was modeled. Offset printing process was de-
scribed in [812]. While [13] proves the relationship between
web tension and print quality, [14] stresses its relation to lateral
control. It also discusses the phenomenon of slip in lateral
control when the tension is low. References [15, 16] elaborate
on the offset process and describe an offset printer connected to
an R2R system. Reference [17] is a treatise on fuzzy logic. Web
registration control and tensions effect on it were describe in
[18, 19]. Electronic line shaft principle widely used web han-
dling is elaborated in [20]. The importance of low tension in
printed electronics can be inferred from [21].
There are several causes for production of tension distur-
bances within an R2R system. Offset printing is a contact
Fig. 2 a Offset-gravure non-contact phase; b offset-impression non-contact phase
155
printing process wherein the printing device (offset roll)
comes in direct contact with the PET substrate on which the
printing is to be done. The nature of the offset printer shown in
Fig. 1a, b is such that the offset roll comes in contact and loses
contact with both the gravure and impression rolls for every
cycle of operation. One cycle refers to one complete rotation
of the offset roll. These phases are shown in Fig. 2. Further-
more, the offset roll surface (PDMS blanket) has an affinity
with the web (PET). This leads to a plucking of the web when
the contact phase between the offset and impression roll
comes to an end. These disturbances are reasonably periodic
with respect to the rotation of the offset roll as shown in Fig. 4.
Although this paper specifically addresses the problem of
propagation of the aforementioned tension disturbances from
span 3 to span 4, the proposed algorithm is generic and is not
dependent on the type of disturbance. One of the problems of
allowing the propagation of these disturbances is that when
operating the R2R system at low tensions (5 N) is that the web
guide(lateral controller) shown in Fig. 1b becomes ineffective
causing serious lateral error in the web that is wound.
Although in theory the control of a four-span R2R system
like this system is to be dealt with as a multi-inputmulti-
output (MIMO) system, but this is hardly practical. Accurate
modeling is required to achieve good performance for each
configuration of the machine and this also reduces flexibility
of the system to operate with different raw materials. Hence,
the industries neglect the interconnected nature of the system
and break the control problem into single-inputsingle-output
(SISO) systems which is usually PID controller. This ap-
proach is suited if the disturbances in tension are less or when
the processing of web is not affected by tension fluctuations.
Printed electronics requires very precise tension control and
the process of offset printing itself generates disturbances. For
this technology to be scalable to the industry, the solution
needs to be free of system modeling and easily tunable.
156
Keeping these in view, a new fuzzy hybrid tension control
system has been developed that mimics a PID controller but
also takes feedback from the upstream span as shown in
Fig. 3. The resulting controller is capable of almost eliminat-
ing the propagation of disturbances. Besides being of use to
printed electronics industry, the aforementioned technique
will also benefit countless converting industries that employ
R2R system with very large number of tension spans.
2 Methods and materials
As can be seen in Fig. 1c, there are a total six prime movers in
the web machine. These servo packs are of Mitsubishi brand:
servo-amp (MRJ2S70A) and servo motor (HC-KFS-73). The
servo motors are coupled to the respective rollers via a gear
boxes with gearing ratio 10:1. Essential information regarding
the physical dimensions and other parameters of the R2R
system are presented in Table 1. The nip rollers at infeed and
outfeed units are designed such that they hold the web tightly
and prevent slipping of web. As can be seen in Fig. 1a, there
are two rollers in any nip roll pair. The one at the bottom is
powered by the servo motor while the one at the top rotates as
a result of engagement with the bottom roller. The weight of
the bearing assembly of the top roller ensures tight engage-
ment between the rollers. Servo motors at the un-wind and the
re-wind side are coupled to expanding pneumatic mandrels.
Rolls of web are fixed on them by placing the web rolls on the
mandrels and applying pneumatic pressure to the mandrels.
The pressure expands the mandrels and fastens them against
the rolls. Offset printer has a total of three rolls. While the
offset and the gravure rolls are driven rolls, the impression roll
is driven by the offset roll. The gravure roll is pressed against
the offset roll with the help of two pneumatic cylinders. Two
other cylinders press the offset roll against the impression roll.
The gap between the axes of these rolls is not constant. When
Fig. 3 Proposed hybrid
controller
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2014) 71:153163
the offset roll disengages with either the gravure or impression
roll, the gap between them decreases and it increases back
during engagement. This change in gap is in fact essential, but
too much variation can cause large disturbances in the R2R
system. Large variation occurs when offset roll disengages. In
order to prevent very large variation, adjustable physical stops
exist. The stops are carefully set with the aid of micrometers
that measure gap in tens of microns.
The interface hardware is from National Instruments. This
particular brand allows modular development of very complex
control systems. Various interfacing hardware modules can be
added as and when required, this considerably reduces system
development time. There are specific pre-built modules for
interfacing with the different sensors and actuators such as
load cells, pneumatic actuators, and servo motors. LabVIEW
8.6 software was used to write the controller code. One of the
advantages of using this particular interface hardware and
software is that there is no actual physical rewiring of the
control system required to switch between the conventional
and proposed controller. The proposed control system
Fig. 3can be implemented by altering the software for the
conventional control system shown in Fig. 1c. The software is
written using a block diagram-based programming language.
The benefit of writing code in the form of block diagrams in
this particular programming environment is that parallel com-
puting can be implemented. Besides, it also offers a variety of
sub-routines that can be easily incorporated into the control
system being developed.
3 Control system design
3.1 Description of conventional control architecture
PI controller is one of the simplest and robust controllers in
existence. It stands for Proportional Integral controller. PI
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2014) 71:153163 157

Table 1 R2R system parameters methods to obtain K p and K i . The conventional control archi-
Parameter Value(units) tecture shown in Fig. 1c uses a PID controller. The D in PID
stands for derivative. This term is not necessary for an R2R
Radius of nip roller 40 mm system in practice. Hence in reality it is the aforementioned PI
Radius of offset roller 80 mm controller. As seen in Fig. 1c, there are four PID controllers
Width of web 120 mm which control tension in each of the four spans of the system.
Thickness of web 0.1 mm Thus, it has strictly speaking four SISO controllers.
Maximum possible web velocity 0.4 m/s
Load cell capacity 250 N 3.2 Capturing interaction of the spans

While operating the R2R system with conventional control

controllers are used in target tracking applications. This con- system, it is observed that large disturbances are produced in
troller is used to keep the state y of a system as close to a target span 3 by the offset printer. Also, it is observed that these
state y ref as possible when the error in the state is fed into the disturbances propagated to span 4. Upon examining the rolls
controller. wound by the re-winder, they were found to be defective,
namely the web had swayed laterally to considerable distance,
Error e yref y
leaving behind badly wound rolls. These roll defects are
irreparable. Also on few occasions this sort of bad winding
The PI controller is mathematically given by the function:
led to wobbly and eccentrically wound web, which further led
Z to slipping and collapse of the roll from the re-winder spindle,
PIe K p e K i e dt 1 threatening safety of the R2R system. Tension data from span
3 and 4 was analyzed and it was found that operation of
This may also be written as follows for discrete time systems at T3ref=T4ref=5 N was the cause. The amplitude
systems of tension from disturbances in T3 and T4 was close to 5 N.
This caused the tension to drop to 0 N in T3 and T4 (as a result
Xn
of tension propagation), several times during each cycle of
PIek K p ek K i ek t 2
k0 offset printing. Offset printing takes place at the interface of
spans 2 and 3; hence, printing has already taken place before
Where, e k is the kth sample of error and t is the discrete disturbances may affect the lateral accuracy of web in span 3.
time step. A key feature of PI controller is the ease with which But fall in tension T4 has dramatic effect on the lateral control
they can be tuned. There are several scientific and heuristic system in span 4, resulting in badly wound web. For this

Fig. 4 Tension in spans T3 and 20

T4 plotted against time. One of T3
the cycles of disturbance has been T4
pointed out
Cycle under consideration
15
Tension(N)

10

0
8200000 8210000 8220000 8230000 8240000 8250000
Time(ms)
158 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2014) 71:153163

reason, the T4ref was set at 10 N tension in later experiments.

As can be seen in Fig. 4, the tension T3 oscillates about
T3ref=5 N and tension T4 oscillates about T4ref=10 N. Upon
closer examination of Fig. 4, it can be determined that T4 is
related to T3 and they show the same trend. The web dynam-
ics is given by,
dT m t V m T m t V m1 T m1 t
CV m V m1 3
dt L
Where, T in T m is the tension of a span and subscript m
denotes the span number counted from un-winder, V m is the
velocity of m th web span which is measured as the linear
velocity of the downstream driven roller of the m th span, L is
the span length, and C is the spring constant of web.
This again indicates a direct relationship between the trend
of T3 and T4. Also, it is evident from results that the conven-
tional control architecture with PI controller cannot prevent
propagation of tension disturbances from spans 3 to 4 because
ideally the output of controller of span 4 should not just be a
function of e, the tension tracking error of span 4, but also a
function of e, the tracking error of span 3. Another important
conclusion from the above equation is that the R2R system is
time varying and nonlinear. This is because of the fact that the
radius of the system at un-winder and re-winder are not
constant, but change as the system operates. Fig. 5 a Block diagram of fuzzy controller. b Block diagram of self-
tuning FLC
e error in tension of current span T 4ref T 4

0
e error in tension of previous span T 3ref T 3
From the above discussions, it can be concluded that
1. The controller should be a function of e .
2. e is a function of e.
Also from the stablealthough imperfectperformance
of conventional control architecture, it can be concluded that
PI controller is effective on its own when there are no distur-
bances. If the PI controller can somehow be provided with
information about the disturbances, besides the tracking error
e, then it should perform better. Consequently, the PI control-
ler should be provided with a value that is a function of both e
and e for better performance. Thus, a new controller which
takes into account e and e combines them into a new value of
error e total. This value is best obtained by applying fuzzy logic.
Fuzzy logic provides tools to seamlessly develop complex
multi-variable functions from linguistic conclusions, such as
the ones already described in this section.
The proposed fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is shown as
block diagram in Fig. 5a. Typically, a fuzzy system is a
mathematical function that is defined linguistically, using a
set of If-Then statements. The input space and output space
are represented by fuzzy sets. The fuzzy sets of input space are
related to that of the output space via If-Then rules known as
the rule base and fuzzy logic operators such as AND, OR,
NOT, etc. The combination of the input sets, the output sets,
and the rule base together with the crisp output generating
mechanism is known as the Fuzzy Inference System (FIS).
Input and output space are normalized within a range such as
(1, 1) or (100, 100), etc., for convenience of computation.
The input scaling function f(e) and g (e) normalizes the inputs
and the output scaling function turns the crisp output from the
FIS into real-world output. In this work, output scaling is not
employed, instead the PI controller in Fig. 5a is tuned. The
scaling function can be used to tune a fuzzy system. In the
proposed system,
f e input scaling function of error in tension 4
of current span e=T 4ref
Since T4ref is constant, f(e) is not used for tuning pur-
poses, only for normalizing.
ge0 input scaling function of error in tension 5
0
of previous span e =
In the case of g(e), the function is used for purpose of
tuning. The output from FIS is the fuzzified output. FIS
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2014) 71:153163
essentially takes error as input and using the fuzzy sets in
Fig. 6 and the rule base that will be derived shortly, the error
is fuzzified. Once variables e and e are fuzzified, they can
be readily manipulated to yield a function that combines e
and e.
When all the external disturbances are disregarded, it is
possible to establish a clear linguistic relationship between the
input error and output error as given in the rule base. The base
length of the truncated triangles b1, b2, b3, b4, and b5 shown
in output sets in Fig. 6 is used as tuning parameters. Again, the
tuning is done to get a performance similar to the PI controller,
in terms of overshoot, settling time, etc. It is assumed that a
large positive error in tension e requires a large negative
torque and large positive e requires a large negative torque.
Similarly, a diminished positive error requires a diminished
negative torque. Based on this linguistic premise, the fuzzy
rule base is formulated. The input space and the output space
are partitioned into five fuzzy sets.
In the fuzzy sets shown in Fig. 6, VL stands for very less,
L stands for less, N stands for nominal, H stands for
high, and VH stands for very high. There are five fuzzy
sets each for input and output. Input sets are all triangular and
the sets VL, L, N, H, and VH are centered on 1, 0.5, 0, 0.5,
and 1, respectively. The input space after scaling is in the
range (1, 1) and is denoted by the x-axis. The y-axis denotes
the membership value. One case is illustrated in Fig. 6. When
a scaled error e of value 0.75 is input, the membership of e in
sets H and VH is 0.5. And membership of e in the remaining
fuzzy sets is 0. Similarly, Fig. 6 also shows that output fuzzy
sets VL, L, N, H and VH are centered on 1, 0.5, 0, 0.5, and
1, respectively. Attached to each of the sets VL, L, N, H, and
VH are the truncated triangles with bases b1, b2, b3, b4, and
b5. The area of the truncated triangles act as weights for the
corresponding output sets. The input and output fuzzy sets are
related by a rule base.
Fig. 6 Fuzzy sets
159
Fuzzy rule base for the FIS shown in Fig. 5a, b is given as
follows:
if e is VL then e f is VH
if e is L then e f is H
if e is N then e f is N
if e is H then e f is L
if e is VH then e f is VL
And e and e f stand for scaled tension error and fuzzified
error, respectively. All the above rule bases are executed
simultaneously, which is equivalent to saying that fuzzy addi-
tion or OR operation being performed. The rule base links the
input fuzzy sets to output fuzzy sets. Area of the truncated
triangular output sets is determined based on the membership
value of e to the corresponding input set.
The output of the FIS is given by the following equation:
e f M VL e Arb5; M VL e 1 M L eArb4; M L e
0:5 M N e0 M H eArb2; M H e0:5 6
M VH eArb1; M VH e1
Where,
M(VL e) is evaluated as the membership value of e in the
fuzzy set VL.
Ar(.) is the area of the truncated triangular output fuzzy set
evaluated as Ar (b5, M (VL e))=(2M (VL e)M (VL e)2)
b5/2
Equation (6) can be described as follows:
1. The inference mechanism shown uses the centroid meth-
od, to determine the crisp output.
2. Overall input space as shown in Fig. 4 can be divided into
six regions, with two regions at the both extremes being
covered by one fuzzy set each and the remaining four
regions have two fuzzy sets each.
3. Output from the inference system is determined by the ratio
between the areas of the truncated triangles at the output
set. The transition from one region to another can be made
smooth or abrupt depending on the difference in the base
length of the weight triangles corresponding to the region.
Similarly the fuzzified value of e is given by
e f M VL e0 Arb5; M VL e0 1 M L e0 Arb4; M L e0
0:5 M N e0 0 M H e0 Arb2; M H e0 0:5 7
M VH e0 Arb1; M VH e0 1
The total value of fuzzified error going into the PI control-
ler in the fuzzy controller is
0
etotal e f e f 8
As seen in block diagram in Fig. 5a, the same FIS is used
for fuzzifying errors e and e because T3 and T4 show a strong
160
correlation. The outputs from the two FIS are added to obtain
e total. This is equivalent to fuzzy addition. The value of in
Eq. (5) is used to determine the extent to which the correlation
of T3 and T4 is used in controller design. For instance, a very
large value of (say 100), will make g(e) very small (about
1/100th, as g(e) has a range of (1,1)), and hence its contri-
bution to the overall controller is very small and vice versa.
Thus becomes the parameter that controls how correlation is
accounted for in the controller.
Preliminary tuning of the FLC in Fig. 5a is done by
setting =100 and b1=b2=b3=b4=b50 and determin-
ing the K p and K i . This makes the fuzzy controller behave
with the same performance as a simple PI controller func-
tioning in place of the fuzzy controller. After such a tuning
session, fine tuning can be done by changing b1, b2, b3,
b4, and b5. But still the correlation between T3 and T4
exists. In order to remove the correlation and in effect
decouple the control of span 4 from span 3, has to be
tuned. As mentioned earlier, the correlation can be
accounted for in FLC by decreasing . For fine tuning the
value of , it is necessary to quantitatively measure the
correlation. Correlation coefficient is an effective statistical
tool to measure the degree of correlation between two quan-
tities. The Pearson's correlation coefficient is one of the most
basic of the correlation coefficients. It gives an output in the
range (1, 1). It is a measure of the extent of linear rela-
tionship between two quantities; a value of zero implies that
the two quantities vary independently; a positive large value
implies that a strong relation exists and as one value in-
creases the other increases as well; a large negative correla-
tion is a sign that there is a strong relationship between the
two quantities but as one increases the other tends to
decrease.
Now, the value is gradually decreased to make the
value of e f more effective in the overall control output of
the fuzzy controller. Major changes were observed in the
domain of in (5, 25). Therefore, only the experimental
data from this domain has been analyzed. It can be seen
from Fig. 7ae that as the value of decreases, the corre-
lation between T3 and T4 diminishes. The value of
Pearson's correlation coefficient between T3 and T4 is cal-
culated for the data points marked in the Fig. 7ae. Each of
these regions is treated as a sample representing the whole
data. The regions marked are in fact one cycle in the
operation of the offset printer. A total of 15,000 data points
collected 1 ms apart make up each of these regions. Corre-
lation coefficient is plotted against the scaling factor in
Fig. 8. It is evident that the correlation coefficient shows a
clear trend and it becomes zero as approaches 8. The
effect of this can also be seen in Fig. 7d, in which the
value is 8, and the disturbances propagated to span 4 is
considerably reduced. Now, it is possible to lower the refer-
ence tension T4ref to 5 N and the results can be seen in
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2014) 71:153163
Fig. 7f. It can be seen that although disturbances do propa-
gate, it is much diminished and hence with amplitude of
around 1 N. The web wound in this manner did not have
lateral winding error in them.
3.3 Self-tuning controller
In previous section, the tension disturbance propagation was
brought under control by setting a constant value of . This
value was derived as a result of a series of experiments
conducted within a short period of time. But the ideal value
of may not be a constant. It has already been discussed in
Eq. (3) that the R2R system is a time varying system. This
time varying nature is especially prevalent in the un-wind and
the re-wind sections. Hence, the characteristics of span 4 for
which the above controller has been designed will change
with time as a result of the radius change. Therefore, instead
of using a constant , it can be calculated online and updated
regularly. To achieve this self-tuning nature, it is crucial to
compute the value of Pearson's correlation coefficient online
and update regularly based on it. Generally, computation of
correlation coefficient is a very tedious process for a data set as
large 15,000 data points but LabVIEW offers this feature as a
sub-VI (subroutine) and the PXI completes the computation in
1 ms. The Pearson's correlation coefficient is in the range (1,
1) and from Fig. 8, a qualitative relation is found that can be
stated as follows:
An increase of will lead to an increase of correlation
while a decrease will lead to a decrease in correlation.
This is in fact a tracking problem, where correlation is
being tracked and the necessary correlation is zero. Since
feedback controllers require an error of the tracked quantity
to be as input and optimum is the output, correlation
coefficient itself may be used as the tracking error. This is
a very simple relation which implies that the update can
be done using a PI-like controller using correlation coeffi-
cient as the input. The self-tuning FLC will look as shown
in the block diagram in Fig. 5b. In addition to taking e and
e for feedback, this controller also takes T3 and T4. is
updated as follows.
seed PI CorrT 3; T 4 9
where,
seed is seed tuning factor
Seed tuning factor is used so that the self-tuner converges
sooner. In the previous section, the seed is found to be 8. at
any given time is dependent upon the radius of the roll at that
time. For any given R2R system, the seed has to be found out
at the start of the system. is valid only for a short period of
operation of the system; hence as the system is operated it is
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2014) 71:153163 161

a 20
b 20
T3 T3
T4 T4

Cycle under consideration

15 15
Cycle under consideration

Tension(N)
Tension(N)

10 10

5 5

0 0
9180000 9190000 9200000 9210000 9220000 9750000 9760000 9770000 9780000 9790000 9800000 9810000

Time(ms) Time(ms)

c d 20
20
T3 T3
T4 T4

15 15
Cycle under consideration Cycle under consideration

Tension(N)
Tension(N)

10 10

5 5

0 0
9180000 9190000 9200000 9210000 9220000 11370000 11380000 11390000 11400000 11410000

Time(ms) Time(ms)

e f 20
20
T3 T3
T4 T4

Cycle under consideration 15

15
Cycle under consideration
Tension(N)
Tension(N)

10 10

5 5

0 0
10100000 10110000 10120000 10130000 10140000 12280000 12290000 12300000 12310000 12320000
Time(ms) Time(ms)
Fig. 7 Tension in spans 3 and 4 under different : a =25, T3=5 N, T4=10 N; b = 17.5, T3=5 N, T4=10 N; c =10, T3=5 N, T4=10 N; d =8,
T3=5 N, T4=10 N; e =5, T3=5 N, T4=10 N; f =8, T3=5 N, T4=5 N

updated every millisecond by the Integral part of the PI

After fine tuning the system, the result can be seen in
controller in Eq. (9).
Fig. 9. Tuning factors for PI controller in Eq. (5) were found
PI () is discrete time PI controller of Eq. (2) to be K p =0.1 and K i =0.0028.
Corr (T3, T4) Pearson's correlation coefficient of the last All the above experiments were performed at a web
15,000 consecutive data points of T3 and T4. velocity of 0.04 m/s.
162 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2014) 71:153163

0.6
Correlation coefficient which the given R2R system operates stably. This would
be optimum if it was not for the disturbances produced by
the offset printer. As can be seen in Fig. 7a, the tension
0.4
disturbance amplitude is larger than 5 N. Therefore con-
trolling the tension T4 using a single loop PID controller
0.2
correlation

at T4ref=5 N will cause the tension T4 to drop to 0 N,

several times with a cycle of the system operation. This
0.0
severely affects the lateral control system in span 4. Fur-
ther, the low tension spikes in the winding sectionspan
-0.2
4will lead to badly wound eccentric and wobbly web
roll. This along with poor lateral accuracy of winding
-0.4
leads to practically unusable rolls. To avoid these prob-
lems, the experiments were conducted with T4ref=10 N
-0.6
4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
(Fig. 7ae). Thus, the tension spikes which propagate to
span 4 never cause the tension T4 to go too close to 0 N.
Fig. 8 Correlation coefficient vs But as can be seen in Fig. 9, the spikes in tension T4 are
reduced considerably by the use of the proposed algo-
rithm, this allows the system to be operated at the lowest
permissible tension of 5 N. The overall amplitude of the
4 Results and discussion tension T4 is found to be less than 1 N. Occasional spikes
in tension do not appear to exceed 3 N. It is worth noting
Lateral control system requires some minimum tension to that the noise in tension measured using load cell and the
operate as mentioned earlier and printed electronics de- measurement equipment is approximately 0.5 N in
mands the minimum possible tension. A tension of 5 N is amplitude.
reasonable because it is found to be the least tension at

7800000 7850000 7900000 7950000 8000000 5 Conclusions

30
scaling factor
20 A new tension controller has been created for roll-to-roll
scaling

system that offers a trade-off between commercial single

10 loop tension control and more specific MIMO-type tension
controllers. It has been designed keeping in mind the
1.5
0 printed electronics industry where very precise and low
Correlation
1.0 tensions are required. At the same time, the frame work of
correlation

0.5 the design is generic and can be applied to any roll to

0.0 roll-based system. The key contribution of the work is that
-0.5 it is model less approach to control and uses fuzzy logic
-1.0
10
to prevent propagation of tension disturbances from one
T4 span to another. This allows the system to be designed in
8
Tension(N)

an iterative fashion following a path similar to the design

6
of a PI controller but with provision to take into account
4
disturbances from previous span by fuzzy techniques and
2
thereby decoupling the tension control of a span. This
0
10 system has been tested in an R2R system integrated with
T3
8 an offset printer. The system considerably reduced the
Tension(N)

6 disturbances produced by the offset printer that propagated

4 to the next tension span. An online self-tuning mechanism
2 ensures that the system tunes itself according to the cur-
0 rent nature of the system and prevents disturbance propa-
7800000 7850000 7900000 7950000 8000000 gation. Besides being useful to printed electronics industry
Time(milliSeconds) it will find application in converting industries where large
Fig. 9 Closed loop self-tuning control of disturbance propagation numbers of tension spans are involved.
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2014) 71:153163
Acknowledgments The study was supported by the Technology Inno-
vation Program (No. 10041596, Development of core technology for TFT
free active matrix addressing color electronic paper with day and night
usage) funded by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE, Korea).
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