Closed-loop control of laser cladding process by powder injection

Abstract

This article describes the feedback control of the laser cladding process. The clad’s height measured by an optical CCD-based detector is fed into a PID-based controller to tune the laser pulse energy in order to keep the clad’s height in a desired threshold in real-time. The perfomencae of the closed-loop control system is experimentally tested in the presence of different disturbances. The results indicate a significant improved over the open-loop process.