Control of Drum Boiler dynamics via an optimized fuzzy controller

Drum Boilers are an important component of many modern industrial facilities. Generally, the simulation of tailormade Drum Boilers starts up at each steady-state condition inside each operation region. The problem of such systems is the control of parameters, as level and pressure, around a reference value. The design of control algorithms can be accomplished using intelligent techniques such as Fuzzy Logic and Genetic Algorithms. This paper proposes a Fuzzy Controller, optimized by Genetic Algorithms, able to control Drum Boiler dynamics. Genetic procedures are used to obtain optimal Membership Functions and Fuzzy rules. The results show that the timing performance of the control system are improved reducing the settling time and the rise time. Moreover, the system shows good robustness to different reference values.