| Abstract: | The controller of a crystal growth furnace with 15 heating zones must have a decentralized structure. It is shown that each control station must necessarily satisfy a certain robustness property and that the design of the whole decentralized controller can be replaced by the problem of designing the control stations separately from each other as robust centralized controllers. As a basis for this, it is shown that the model can be considerably reduced. Although the zones are strongly coupled it will be seen here that, owing to structural properties of the plant, the furnace can be described by a model which has regard to only three zones. Experimental results with furnace illustrate the modelling and design methods used. |
