Industrial applications of fuzzy logic at General Electric

• Published in: Proceedings of the IEEE Vol. 83; no. 3; pp. 450 - 465
• Main Authors: Bonissone, P.P., Badami, V., Chiang, K.H., Khedkar, P.S., Marcelle, K.W., Schutten, M.J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.03.1995
• Subjects: Aircraft propulsion; Automatic control; Control system synthesis; Costs; Electrical equipment industry; Fuzzy logic; Nonlinear control systems; Resonance; Technology transfer; Turbines
• ISSN: 0018-9219
• DOI: 10.1109/5.364490

Fuzzy logic control (FLC) technology has drastically reduced the development time and deployment cost for the synthesis of nonlinear controllers for dynamic systems. As a result we have experienced an increased number of FLC applications. We illustrate some of our efforts in FLC technology transfer, covering projects in turboshaft aircraft engine control, steam turbine startup, steam turbine cycling optimization, resonant converter power supply control, and data-induced modeling of the nonlinear relationship between process variables in a rolling mill stand. We compare these applications in a cost/complexity framework, and examine the driving factors that led to the use of FLCs in each application. We emphasize the role of fuzzy logic in developing supervisory controllers and in maintaining explicit tradeoff criteria used to manage multiple control strategies. Finally, we describe some of our FLC technology research efforts in automatic rule base tuning and generation, leading to a suite of programs for reinforcement learning, supervised learning, genetic algorithms, steepest descent algorithms, and rule clustering.< >