Gelcasting is a new method for manufacturing advanced structural ceramics for use, for example, in the aerospace industry. The process involves a drying stage, where moisture, which constitutes approximately a quarter of the mass of the part, is removed in a commercial dryer. The control system design for the gelcast ceramic drying process is complicated by the requirement of minimizing the drying time while avoiding cracking during shrinkage of the part. This paper describes the application of the Lyapunov theory for ï¬nding an exponentially stablizing controller for the nonlinear drying model. A RealSim Rapid Prototyping model and the MATRIXx design automation environment are used for real-time control, as well as feedback system implementation.
It is shown that the proposed design and testing automation process with a user-friendly interactive animation (IA) graphical-user-interface (GUI) provides an effective and efï¬cient environment for real-time control of the gelcast drying process.