System and method for controlling a flow regulating valve in a filling machine

Abstract

A method for controlling a flow regulating valve () of a filling machine (), controlling the flow of pourable food product, envisages: receiving an inlet pressure measurement (P) from a pressure sensor (); receiving an inlet flow measurement (F) from a flow meter (); determining a control signal (S) for controlling an operating position of the flow regulating valve () by combined contributions (C, C) of a flow feedback control module (), receiving at its input a flow set point (F) and the inlet flow measurement (F) and generating a first control contribution (C) indicative of a difference between the inlet flow measurement and the flow set point; and a flow feed-forward control module (), receiving at its input the inlet pressure measurement (P) and the flow set point (F) and generating a second control contribution (C) as a function of the flow set point and inlet pressure measurement, using pre-stored fluid-dynamic maps, which may be a result of a characterization of the flow regulating valve in a test condition. The flow feed-forward control module uses the fluid dynamics maps in a dynamically adaptive manner, depending on different operating conditions of the filling machine and/or the related pourable food product, thereby adapting to the same different operating conditions and/or the pourable food product.