Modeling and control of a heat gun

Abstract

In this thesis, a heat gun is designed to deliver a stream of hot air which satisfies certain temperature and velocity uniformity specifications. The heat gun was initially designed and simulated in FLUENT. From the simulation results, the parameters and some supplements which improve the output uniformity of the heat gun were identified. Based on the results obtained, the different components of the heat gun were modelled. They are the DC motor for driving the air, the main resistive coils for heating the air, the insulated pipe acting as the air flow path, the additional coil for compensating the heat loss near the end of the pipe, and the heat recycle.Various control methods for the heat gun are also proposed. They are proportional-integral-derivative control, state feedback control, linear-quadratic state-feedback regulator and linear-quadratic-Gaussian control. For each control method, the effect of the control parameters were observed and used in improving the performance of the heater. In order to enhance the control, problems of disturbance rejection, actuator saturation, measurement noise are also discussed.