Self-organizing fuzzy control of constant cutting force in turning

Constant force control is gradually becoming an important technique in the modern manufacturing process. Especially, constant cutting force control is a useful approach in increasing the metal removal rate and the tool life for turning systems. However, turning systems generally have nonlinear with uncertainty dynamic characteristics. Designing a model-based controller for constant cutting force control is difficult because an accurate mathematical model in the turning system is hard to establish. Hence, this study employed a model-free fuzzy controller to control the turning system in order to achieve constant cutting force control. Nevertheless, the design of the traditional fuzzy controller (TFC) presents difficulties in finding control rules and selecting an appropriate membership function. Moreover, the database and fuzzy rules of a TFC are fixed after the design step and then cannot appropriately regulate ones real time according to the system output response and the desired control performance. To solve the above problem, this work develops a self-organizing fuzzy controller (SOFC) for constant cutting force control to evaluate control performance of the turning system. The SOFC continually updates the learning strategy in the form of fuzzy rules, during the turning process. The fuzzy rule table of this SOFC can be begun with zero initial fuzzy rules which not only overcome the difficulty in the TFC design, but also establish a suitable fuzzy rules table, and support practically convenient fuzzy controller applications in turning systems control. To confirm the applicability of the proposed intelligent controllers, this work retrofitted an old lathe for a turning system to evaluate the feasibility of constant cutting force control. The SOFC has a better control performance in constant cutting force control than does the TFC, as verified in experimental results.