Juan Suardíaz Muro

Sensors Systems for the Automation of Operations in the Ship Repair Industry

Hull cleaning before repainting is a key operation in the maintenance of ships. For years, a method to improve such operation has been sought by means of the robotization of techniques such as grit blasting and ultra high pressure water jetting. Despite this, it continues to be standard practice in shipyards that this process is carried out manually because the developed robotized systems are too expensive to be widely accepted by shipyards. We have chosen to apply a more conservative and realistic approach to this problem, which has resulted in the development of several solutions that have been designed with different automation and operation range degrees. These solutions are fitted with most of the elements already available in many shipyards, so the installation of additional machinery in the workplace would not be necessary. This paper describes the evolutionary development of sensor systems for the automation of the preparation process of ship hull surfaces before the painting process is performed. Such evolution has given rise to the development of new technologies for coating removal.

Self-Tuning Controller for Flow Rate Liquid System

Liquid flowrate control systems are considered one of the most applied systems in industrial processes. This research work deals with the design and practical application of self-tuning PID based pole placement controller of liquid flow delivered out of a variable speed centrifugal pump. The identification of the process parameters is carried out applying the recursive least square method (RLS). The robustness of the proposed controller is examined in the presence of level disturbances applied from pump suction side. Experimental results have shown that the proposed controller offers satisfactory results for a wide range of systems and with different values of time delays because it can be easily dealt with by simply extending the model numerator.