Monitored robust force control of a milling process

This paper focuses on the important problems of toot wear or flexion that induce defects in the part. The contributions of the main control strategies are discussed. A monitored robust force control strategy is specified by a hybrid automaton. The force controller is designed from an identified plant model by a robust pole placement method based on iterative shaping of the input-output sensitivity functions. Two estimates of the cutting mean force based on the l(1) and l(infinity) norms are proposed to take the great variations of the measured forces issued from the multiple teeth engaged in the part into account. The monitored robust force control strategy was implemented in a platform of experiments to evaluate two scenarios of experiments showing a good way to get more efficient performances for the monitored control strategy. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.