Fundamental investigation of the modal control of temperature fields with the application on machine tool structures

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Steffen Ihlenfeldt
• Subject Area: Production Automation and Assembly Technology ; Automation, Mechatronics, Control Systems, Intelligent Technical Systems, Robotics ; Engineering Design, Machine Elements, Product Development
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 468584574

Thermal displacement is a significant reason for geometric errors of machine tools. Energetic losses of the electric drives, the machining process and the ambient temperature lead to a rise of the machine temperature and consequently to an expansion of the material. Especially an uneven temperature distribution in the structure leads to large displacements. An example is a machine Frame that is caused to bend by an asymmetric heat source.An object of this project is the design and the analyses of a methodology for the manipulation of temperature fields in structural components. For this purpose, the thermal state of the machine is measured during operation and manipulated by thermal actuators (heating or cooling elements). This represents a multi-variable feedback control in which a strong coupling between all in- and outputs of the system arise. To focus the challenges of this distributed heat conduction problem, this research deals with the method of thermal modal analysis, which enables a decoupled state space description of the system. The overall goal of the project is to analyse the potential of the modal temperature field control in terms of the reduction of thermally induced machining errors.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants