World-wide interest in the environment has promoted significant commercial
attention to the elimination and disposal of waste products and hazardous m
aterials. In addition, despite less publicity in the media, there has been
a growing research base in the elimination of waste resulting from ineffici
ent production processing. In food processing, considerable waste produce a
rises in the form of 'giveaways', in overfilled containers, or through 'thr
owaways' as non-conforming underfilled products which end up in rubbish bin
s. The major aim of the current research programme is to investigate the us
e of ultrasound monitoring, as a means of on-line measurement of fluid leve
ls in food containers. Ultrasound monitoring has the potential to be an acc
urate measurement technique which is capable of being combined with an appr
opriate control strategy to provide the most suitable method of reducing or
eliminating the waste problem. The objective of the research described her
ein was to investigate controller design methodologies for a bottling proce
ss. The bottling process was modelled using MATLAB(R) and SIMULINK(R) packa
ges and controller designs were implemented to improve the response charact
eristics of the process. Both digital control and fuzzy logic controller de
sign methods were investigated. The digital controller was designed using t
he direct digital design method and resulted in an improved system performa
nce. However, when different carousel delays were considered, the performan
ce varied significantly. Fuzzy logic control operates with a pre-determined
set of rules and has been shown to function very well with a bottling syst
em. Bottle fill times and the resulting stability with respect to changing
carousel delays were improved. Available data indicates that fuzzy logic ca
n be used efficiently and effectively, which could provide a valuable asset
to the food processing and allied industries. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.
A. All rights reserved.