Robust H∞ position control of an unloading machine from a rotary hearth furnace

This paper presents the design of a sub-optimal H∞ robust controller for the position control of an unloading machine, from a rotary hearth furnace. In the modeling of the positioning system, the mass of the unloading machine was taken as an approximation of the real value, introducing uncertainties in the position control. In this case, a robust controller was designed using multiplicative uncertainties in order to improve the unloading rate of the furnace. The plant behavior for the nominal case, the perturbed parameters cases and the robustness of the controller is validated by simulation.