A Knowledge-Based Approach for Microwire Casting Plant Control

This chapter presents the main ideas and preliminary results of an applied research project concerning the development of an intelligent plant for microwire casting. The properties of glass-coated microwires are useful for a variety of sensor applications. On the other hand, the process of casting can be one of the methods of nanotechnology and advanced materials. In microwire continuous casting, the main control problem is to maintain the optimum thermal and flow conditions of the process, in order to fabricate the microwire of a given stable diameter. Unlike a conventional casting plant, we propose to use a video camera to take the picture of the molten drop and to control the casting process by means of a knowledge based system. For this reason, a model, that is capable of taking into account the current features of the process and of describing the shape of the drop at each time, is developed. The model presented here should allow us to estimate the geometry of the metal-filled capillary and predict the diameter of microwire at each time during the casting process.