Active disturbance rejection decoupling controller design for roll-to-roll printing machines

The stability of multi-input and multi-output web-tension systems is an important factor that is required to operate properly and to obtain reasonable printing performance in the roll-to-roll printing machines. This paper presents a unique method based on active disturbance rejection control for designing the tension decoupling controller of the unwinding system in the gravure printing machine. In this study, a decoupling model is constructed to obtain the order and the static decoupling plant of the unwinding system. Based on the order and static decoupling plant, an ADRC decoupling controller is designed to enhance the stability of the tension in the unwinding system. The effectiveness and capability of the proposed control strategy are verified by computer simulation and the results show that the proposed tension controller not only realizes a decoupling control for the unwinding system, but also has good disturbance rejection ability and robustness.