PhD student: S. Silaghiu
Supervisor: P. Mutschler
State: In progress (started in 2007)
In industrial production plants, materials are processed e.g. in processing stations and transported between these stations. Using the same system of linear direct drives for processing and transportation results in many benefits:
- High dynamic and high precision (few µm)
- No mechanical transmission _ reduced wear and maintenance
- High productivity
On a track of linear direct drives, many vehicles (work piece carriers) must travel with a high degree of independency. Therefore, the track is separated in many short sections. Each section is fed by its own power electronic inverter. Each inverter is controlled by its own DSP. Each DSP has to perform highly sophisticated control algorithms and high speed communication with the other DSPs in a hard real time environment
Applications of industrial material handling call for systems with e.g. 200-400 inverters and stator- sections and with 50-100 vehicles on it. For such large systems, a centralized architecture of power and information processing is no longer a realistic solution, instead a totally distributed and scalable architecture should be developed and tested in a small-scale experimental set-up.
