A DESIGN STUDY OF HEAT EXCHANGER PROCESS CONTROL BETWEEN CONVENTIONAL AND MAMDANI'S FUZZY LOGIC CONTROLLERS

A heat exchanger is a piece of equipment that continually transfers heat from one
medium to another in order to carry process energy. In order to ensure its smooth
operation, modeling and simulation of the system can be made so that its
performance can be analyzed and improved. The scope of this study is more on
simulation and software implementation of the control system design by using
MATLAB. The main issue tackle in this study is to improve the performance of the
heat exchanger process control. In this study, the heat exchanger is modeled using an
empirical model to simulate the heat exchanger temperature response. A controller is
then designed for the process using two approaches, one using a conventional PI
method and another based on a fuzzy logic controller employing Mamdani inference
method as an alternative approach. From the results obtained, it has been proven that
both controllers are proven stable with good output temperature response. The
responses of both controllers are further scrutinized where the fuzzy logic controller
is shown to have better control performance compared to the PI controller. As a
conclusion, intelligent control is better than the conventional PID control.