Advanced Motion Control Design for Longitudinal Web Dynamics in Roll-to-Roll Systems: Velocity or Position Control?

Roll-to-Roll systems handling web material such as papers, polymers, textiles or metals are very common in the industry. One of the main objectives in web handling plant is to reach an expected web speed while maintaining the web tension within an acceptable range around the tension reference in the entire processing line. In the recent years, several works have focused on the topic of web tension control using H_∞ approaches. In the traditional way, each motor driven roller is controlled in speed and the web tension control is ensured by an external loop. This paper proposes to compare, for the first time, the traditional control strategy with a control strategy including position control rather than speed control. In fact, position control is commonly used in printing industry. The comparison will be ensured in frequency and time domain and take into account the reference tracking performances and the robustness to web elasticity variations.