An electric furnace, inside which desired temperatures are kept constant by generating heat, is known to be a difficult system to control and model exactly because system parameters and response delay time vary as the temperature and position are changed. In this study, the heating system of ceramic drying furnaces with time-varying parameters is mathematically modeled as a second order system and control parameters are estimated by using a RIV (Recursive Instrumental-Variable) method. A modified bang-bang control with magnitude tuning is proposed in the time optimal temperature control of ceramic drying electric furnaces and its performance is experimentally verified. It is proven that temperature tracking of adaptive time optimal control using a second order model is more stable than the GPCEW (Generalized Predictive Control with Exponential Weight) and rapidly settles down by pre-estimation of the system parameters.
