Design And Development Of Simulation Software For Dynamic Characteristics Of Flotation Process

The flotation process is a physical process to separate mineral by taking advantage of the hydrophilic or hydrophobic properties coming from the mineral itself or obtained by the treatments.The production process has the characteristics of multi-variables,strong coupling,strong nonlinearity and interference uncertainty,therefore it is quite difficult and risky to control,debug or verify the production equipment of flotation process directly.To solve this problem,a semi-physical simulation platform consisting of virtual object system and production process monitoring system is developed,which provides an effective industrial verification environment for the research and development of advanced control algorithms and optimal control methods for flotation process.To identify the unknown parameters in the mechanism model of flotation process,an alternating identification algorithm and a genetic algorithm are applied,respectively.An advanced optimal control algorithm for flotation process is also involved for the system testing.The experimental results evaluate the effectiveness of the developed system.The main contributions of the paper are given as follows:1.The flotation process is deeply surveyed and researched.According to the technological processes and the dynamic characteristics of production processes,a operational model of flotation process is established based on two-phase structure of flotation tank proposed by Harris.Based on such an operational model,the alternating identification and genetic algorithm are used to carry out the rolling identification of the unknown parameters,a dynamic model of the flotation process is therefore constructed.2.The simulation software for the flotation process is designed by the establishment of dynamic model and process monitoring.The virtual dynamic module is used to achieve the dynamic simulation of the flotation process,including the developments of the background model program,the main interface of the model,the identification algorithm selection function and the logistics simulation function,whose purpose is to realize the operation monitoring and the simulation verification function of parameter identification.Then,the process monitoring module realizes the verification of the loop control function and the operational optimal algorithms,including the developments of the management monitoring module and the operational control module,which is used for debugging and improving the operational control algorithms.The WinCC is used to develop the human-computer interface and the process monitoring module of the virtual object simulation software,The Matlab is used to develop the simulation model of the flotation process,and the STEP7 is used to develop the loop process control program.The optimal setting module is used to achieve the optimal selection of the basic loop set-point,by this way,the optimal control of production index can be realized.The OPC communication protocol is used to realise the communication between the simulation model program and the process monitoring software.3.The experiments and tests on the operational control are conducted via the experimental software for flotation process.The analysis of the identified operational model and the experiments conducted on software verify the accuracy of the simulation platform.Two different operational control algorithms for the flotation process are tested,and the experimental results evaluate the effectiveness of the developed system.