Predictive Control of Chaotic Processes

Question:
Will same materials and same manufacturing process produce the same product?

Answer:
No

Reason:
Chaotic noises

An historical story:
A butterfly in Thailand caused a hurricane in Florida!

Chaotic noises in chemical reactions:

In the following figure, when there is no chaotic noise, process A goes to process B, and process C to D. However, in the manufacturing process, somehow an atomic collision (as a chaotic noise) happened which causes A to go to D and C to B.

A Real Case:

Problem: inconsistent (average) particle size was observed in PTC (positive temperature coefficients) ceramic production, and the good product rate was below 60%. Need a method to control the quality of the product.

Material used:
Ultra-fine Al2O2 powder

Chemical reaction:
NaAlO2 + H2O --> Al(ON2)3 ¯ + NaOH

Control Process:

• add acid or base to control (speed up or slower) the above induction process
• or change the cooling rate to alter the manufacturing process
• heated Al(ON)3 powder was formed and the distribution of the particle size is near Gaussian
• Al2O3 powder was formed and used in the control process
• Discovery: use a violet light at 2800 å to measure the transparency which varies from batch to batch

Finding:
chaotic noises do have patterns - discovered by MasterMiner™

A Practical Solution to chaotic processes – predictive control (see figure below)