Advances in Industrial Control – serie

This book assembles new methods showing the automotive engineer for the first time how hybrid vehicle configurations can be modeled as systems with discrete and continuous controls.

This book deals with a novel and practical advanced method for control of tandem cold metal rolling processes based on the emerging state-dependent Riccati equation technique. After a short history of tandem cold rolling, various types of cold rolling processes are described. A basic mathematical model of the process is discussed, and the diverse conventional control methods are compared. A detailed treatment of the theoretical and practical aspects of the state-dependent algebraic Riccati equation technique is given, with specific details of the new procedure described and results of simulations performed to verify the control model and overall system performance with the new controller coupled to the process model included. These results and data derived from actual operating mills are compared showing the improvements in performance using the new method. Material is included which shows how the new technique can be extended to the control of a broad range of large-scale complex nonlinear processes.

Control of Integral Processes with Dead Time provides a unified and coherent review of the various approaches devised for the control of integral processes, addressing the problem from different standpoints. In particular, the book treats the following topics: How to tune a PID controller and assess its performance; How to design a two-degree-of-freedom control scheme in order to deal with both the set-point following and load disturbance rejection tasks; How to modify the basic Smith predictor control scheme in order to cope with the presence of an integrator in the process; and how to address the presence of large process dead times.The methods are presented sequentially, highlighting the evolution of their rationale and implementation and thus clearly characterising them from both academic and industrial perspectives.

The Chemical Batch Reactor is aimed at tackling the above problems from a blending of academic and industrial perspectives. Advanced solutions (i.e., those based on recent research results) to the four fundamental problems of modeling, identification, control and fault diagnosis for batch processes are developed in detail in four distinct chapters. In each chapter, a general overview of foundational concepts is also given, together with a review of recent and classical literature on the various subjects.To provide a unitary treatment of the different topics and give a firm link to the underlying practical applications, a single case study is developed as the book progresses; a batch process of industrial interest, i.e., the phenol-formaldehyde reaction for the production of phenolic resins, is adopted to test the various techniques developed. In this way, a roadmap of the solutions to fundamental problems, ranging from the early stages of the production process to the complete design of control and diagnosis systems, is provided for both industrial practitioners and academic researchers.

Networked and Distributed Predictive Control presents rigorous, yet practical, methods for the design of networked and distributed predictive control systems – the first book to do so. The design of model predictive control systems using Lyapunov-based techniques accounting for the influence of asynchronous and delayed measurements is followed by a treatment of networked control architecture development. This shows how networked control can augment dedicated control systems in a natural way and takes advantage of additional, potentially asynchronous and delayed measurements to maintain closed loop stability and significantly to improve closed-loop performance. The text then shifts focus to the design of distributed predictive control systems that cooperate efficiently in computing optimal manipulated input trajectories that achieve desired stability, performance and robustness specifications but spend a fraction of the time required by centralized control systems. Key features of this book include: • new techniques for networked and distributed control system design; • insight into issues associated with networked and distributed predictive control and their solution; • detailed appraisal of industrial relevance using computer simulation of nonlinear chemical process networks and wind- and solar-energy-generation systems; and • integrated exposition of novel research topics and rich resource of references to significant recent work. A full understanding of Networked and Distributed Predictive Control requires a basic knowledge of differential equations, linear and nonlinear control theory and optimization methods and the book is intended for academic researchers and graduate students studying control and for process control engineers. The constant attention to practical matters associated with implementation of the theory discussed will help each of these groups understand the application of the book’s methods in greater depth.

Unmanned Rotorcraft Systems explores the research and development of fully-functional miniature UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) rotorcraft, and provides a complete treatment of the design of autonomous miniature rotorcraft UAVs. The unmanned system is an integration of advanced technologies developed in communications, computing, and control areas, and is an excellent testing ground for trialing and implementing modern control techniques. Included are detailed expositions of systematic hardware construction, software systems integration, aerodynamic modeling; and automatic flight control system design.Emphasis is placed on the cooperative control and flight formation of multiple UAVs, vision-based ground target tracking, and landing on moving platforms. Other issues such as the development of GPS-less indoor micro aerial vehicles and vision-based navigation are also discussed in depth: utilizing the vision-based system for accomplishing ground target tracking, attacking and landing, cooperative control and flight formation of multiple unmanned rotorcraft; and future research directions on the related areas.

Fault Detection and Fault-tolerant Control Using Sliding Modes is the first text dedicated to showing the latest developments in the use of sliding-mode concepts for fault detection and isolation (FDI) and fault-tolerant control in dynamical engineering systems. It begins with an introduction to the basic concepts of sliding modes to provide a background to the field. This is followed by chapters that describe the use and design of sliding-mode observers for FDI using robust fault reconstruction. The development of a class of sliding-mode observers is described from first principles through to the latest schemes that circumvent minimum-phase and relative-degree conditions. Recent developments have shown that the field of fault tolerant control is a natural application of the well-known robustness properties of sliding-mode control. A family of sliding-mode control designs incorporating control allocation, which can deal with actuator failures directly by exploiting redundancy, is presented. Various realistic case studies, specifically highlighting aircraft systems and including results from the implementation of these designs on a motion flight simulator, are described.A reference and guide for researchers in fault detection and fault-tolerant control, this book will also be of interest to graduate students working with nonlinear systems and with sliding modes in particular.Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage the transfer of technology in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of new work in all aspects of industrial control.

Control of Solar Energy Systems details the main solar energy systems, problems involved with their control, and how control systems can help in increasing their efficiency. Thermal energy systems are explored in depth, as are photovoltaic generation and other solar energy applications such as solar furnaces and solar refrigeration systems. This second and updated edition of Advanced Control of Solar Plants includes new material on: solar towers and solar tracking; heliostat calibration, characterization and offset correction; solar radiation, estimation, prediction, and computation; and integrated control of solar plants. This new edition contains worked examples in the text as well as proposed exercises and simulation models and so will be of great use to the student and academic, as well as the industrial practitioner.

Industrial Process Identification and Control Design is devoted to advanced identification and control methods for the operation of continuous-time processes both with and without time delay, in industrial and chemical engineering practice. The simple and practical step- or relay-feedback test is employed when applying the proposed identification techniques, which are classified in terms of common industrial process type: open-loop stable; integrating; and unstable, respectively. Correspondingly, control system design and tuning models that follow are presented for single-input-single-output processes. Furthermore, new two-degree-of-freedom control strategies and cascade control system design methods are explored with reference to independently-improving, set-point tracking and load disturbance rejection. Decoupling, multi-loop, and decentralized control techniques for the operation of multiple-input-multiple-output processes are also detailed. Perfect tracking of a desire output trajectory is realized using iterative learning control in uncertain industrial batch processes. All the proposed methods are presented in an easy-to-follow style, illustrated by examples and practical applications. This book will be valuable for researchers in system identification and control theory, and will also be of interest to graduate control students from process, chemical, and electrical engineering backgrounds and to practising control engineers in the process industry.

Adaptive Internal Model Control is a methodology for the design and analysis of adaptive internal model control schemes with provable guarantees of stability and robustness. Written in a self-contained tutorial fashion, this research monograph successfully brings the latest theoretical advances in the design of robust adaptive systems to the realm of industrial applications. It provides a theoretical basis for analytically justifying some of the reported industrial successes of existing adaptive internal model control schemes, and enables the reader to synthesise adaptive versions of their own favourite robust internal model control scheme by combining it with a robust adaptive law. The net result is that earlier empirical IMC designs can now be systematically robustified or replaced altogether by new designs with assured guarantees of stability and robustness.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies . . . , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series otTers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. The time for nonlinear control to enter routine application seems to be approaching. Nonlinear control has had a long gestation period but much ofthe past has been concerned with methods that involve formal nonlinear functional model representations. It seems more likely that the breakthough will come through the use of other more flexible and amenable nonlinear system modelling tools. This Advances in Industrial Control monograph by Guoping Liu gives an excellent introduction to the type of new nonlinear system modelling methods currently being developed and used. Neural networks appear prominent in these new modelling directions. The monograph presents a systematic development of this exciting subject. It opens with a useful tutorial introductory chapter on the various tools to be used. In subsequent chapters Doctor Liu leads the reader through identification, and then onto nonlinear control using nonlinear system neural network representations.

In the increasingly competitive modern world, the industrial sector faces new challenges such as improving productivity and reducing costs while taking into account the process operational constraints.As energy demand increases in many countries, especially in big cities where the environmental concerns are very important and resources to produce energy are limited, the efficiency of operation of power plants becomes of paramount importance.Under this scenario, this book presents new methodologies to improve power plants' efficiency, by using automatic control algorithms. This will lead to an improvement in the generation of companies' profit and also in the quality of their final product.

In the usual process of control system design, the assumption is made that the controller is implemented exactly. This assumption is usually reasonable, since clearly, the plant uncertainty is the most significant source of uncertainty in the control system, while controllers are implemented with high-precision hardware. However, inevitably, there will be some amount of uncertainty in the controller, a fact that is largely ignored in existing modern advanced robust control techniques. If the controller is implemented by analogue means, there are some tolerances in the analogue components. More commonly, the controller will be implemented digitally, and consequently there will be uncertainty involved with the quantization in the analogue-digital conversion and rounding in the parameter representation and in the numerical computations. A failure to account for these uncertainties in the controller may result in a controller that is "fragile". A controller is fragile in the sense that very small perturbations in the coefficients of the designed controller destabilize the closed-loop control system.This book collects a number of articles which consider the problems of finite-precision computing in digital controllers and filters. Written by leading researchers, topics that the book covers include:- analysis of fragility and finite-precision effects;- design of optimal controller realizations;- design of non-fragile robust controllers;- design of low-complexity digital controllers;- analysis of quantization effects in fuzzy controllers.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage of control technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies ... , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. Nonlinear control methods continue to exert a continuing fascination for current researchers in control systems techniques. Many industrial systems are nonlinear as was so ably demonstrated in the recent Advances in Industrial Control monograph on hydraulic servo-systems by M. Jelali and A. Kroll. However, the need to use a nonlinear control technique depends on the severity of the nonlinearity and the performance specification of the application. In some cases it is imperative that a nonlinear technique be used. The type of technique which is applied usually depends on the available information on the system description. This is the key determinant in the development of new nonlinear control methods. Over the next few years it is hoped that the nonlinear control paradigm will produce several methods which will be easily and widely applicable in industrial problems. In the meantime the search and development research go on.

This book covers a number of models and control types. An integrated nonlinear state-space mode of the marine propulsion system is developed. This is based upon physical principles that incorporate uncertainties arising from engine thermodynamics and disturbances arising from propeller hydrodynamics. The mode employs artificial neural networks to depict the nonlinearities of the thermochemical processes of engine power/torque generation and the engine–turbocharger dynamical interaction; neural nets combine the required mathematical flexibility and formalism with numerical training and calibration options using either thermodynamic engine models or measured data series. The neural state-space model is decomposed appropriately to provide a linearised perturbation model suitable for controller synthesis.The proportional–integral (derivative) control law is examined under the perspective of shaft speed regulation for enhanced disturbance rejection of the propeller load. The typical marine shafting system dynamics and configuration allow for a smart implementation of the D-term on shaft torque feedback.Full state-feedback control is examined for increased robustness of the compensated plant against parametric uncertainty and neglected dynamics. The H¥ requirements on the closed-loop transfer matrix are appropriately decomposed to similar ones on scalar transfer functions, which give specifications that are easier to manipulate.In effect, the methods are comparatively assessed and suggestions and practical applications are given. This synthetic approach to propulsion plant control and operational problems should prove useful for both theoreticians and practitioners, and can be easilty adopted for the control of other proceses or systems outside the marine field, as well.

Hydraulic Servo-systems details the basic concepts of many recent developments of nonlinear identification and nonlinear control and their application to hydraulic servo-systems: developments such as feedback linearisation and fuzzy control.

Plant control systems are subject to the undesirable influence of exogenous commands and disturbances. To track and reject these the authors have designed a feedback control system based on embedding a model of them within the controller itself - the "internal model".From a review of the principles of internal-model-based feedback control design, this book moves on to expound recent enhancements to such designs and then to their implementation in systems operating under conditions of great uncertainty.The case studies presented involve control systems coping with a high degree of nonlinear behaviour. The key issues addressed in each are the design of an adaptive internal model for the specific tracking task and of stabilizing control capable of steering the tracking error to zero while keeping all internal states bounded for any arbitrarily large but bounded envelope of initial data and uncertain parameters. Nested saturated controls form the basis of novel tools for asymptotic analysis and design.

Early and accurate fault detection and diagnosis for modern chemical plants can minimise downtime, increase the safety of plant operations, and reduce manufacturing costs. The process-monitoring techniques that have been most effective in practice are based on models constructed almost entirely from process data. The goal of the book is to present the theoretical background and practical techniques for data-driven process monitoring. Process-monitoring techniques presented include: Principal component analysis; Fisher discriminant analysis; Partial least squares; Canonical variate analysis.The text demonstrates the application of all of the data-driven process monitoring techniques to the Tennessee Eastman plant simulator - demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of each approach in detail. This aids the reader in selecting the right method for his process application. Plant simulator and homework problems in which students apply the process-monitoring techniques to a nontrivial simulated process, and can compare their performance with that obtained in the case studies in the text are included. A number of additional homework problems encourage the reader to implement and obtain a deeper understanding of the techniques.The reader will obtain a background in data-driven techniques for fault detection and diagnosis, including the ability to implement the techniques and to know how to select the right technique for a particular application.

Sheet and film processes include coating, papermaking, metal rolling, and polymer film extrusion. Products produced by these processes include paper, bumper stickers, plastic bags, windshield safety glass, and sheet metal. The total capitalization of industries that rely on these processes is well over $ 500 billion worldwide. These processes are notorious for being difficult to control.The goal of this book is to present the theoretical background and practical techniques for the identification and control of sheet and film processes. It is explained why many existing industrial control systems perform poorly for sheet and film processes. Identification and control algorithms are described and illustrated which provide consistent and reliable product quality. These algorithms include an experimental design technique that ensures that informative data are collected during input-output experimentation, model identification techniques that produce a process model and an estimate of its accuracy, and control techniques that take into account actuator constraints as well as robustness to model uncertainties.The algorithms covered in this book are truly the state of the art. Variations on some of the algorithms have been implemented on industrial sheet and film processes. Other algorithms are in various stages of implementation. All of the algorithms have been applied to realistic simulation models constructed from industrial plant data; many of these studies are included in this book.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies. . . , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for widerand rapid dissemination. Benchmarking is a technique first applied by Rank Xerox in the late 1970s for business processes. As a subject in the commercial arena, benchmarking thrives with, for example, a European Benchmarking Forum. It has taken rather longer for benchmarking to make the transfer to the technical domain and even now the subject is making a slow headway. Akey research step in this direction was taken by Harris (1989) who used minimum variance control as a benchmark for controller loop assessment. This contribution opened up the area and a significant specialist literature has now developed. Significant support for the methodologywas given by Honeywell who have controller assessment routines in their process control applications software; therefore, it is timely to welcome a (first) monograph on controller performance assessment by Biao Huang and Sirish Shah to the Advances in Industrial Control series.

Modern computer-based control systems are able to collect a large amount of information, display it to operators and store it in databases but the interpretation of the data and the subsequent decision making relies mainly on operators with little computer support. This book introduces developments in automatic analysis and interpretation of process-operational data both in real-time and over the operational history, and describes new concepts and methodologies for developing intelligent, state space-based systems for process monitoring, control and diagnosis. The book brings together new methods and algorithms from process monitoring and control, data mining and knowledge discovery, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, and causal relationship discovery, as well as signal processing. It also provides a framework for integrating plant operators and supervisors into the design of process monitoring and control systems.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology impacts all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies…, new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. The environmental aspects of all of our society’s activities are extremely important if the countryside; the sea and wildernesses are to be fully enjoyed by future generations. Urban waste in all its manifestations presents a particularly difficult disposal problem, which must be tackled conscientiously to prevent long lasting damage to the environment. Technological solutions should be seen as part of the available options. In this monograph, the authors M. R. Katebi, M. A. Johnson and J. Wilkie seek to introduce a comprehensive technological framework to the particular measurement and control problems of wastewater processing plants. Of course the disposal of urban sewage is a long-standing process but past solutions have used options (disposal at sea) which are no longer acceptable. Thus to meet new effluent regulations it is necessary to develop a new technological paradigm based on process control methods, and this is what the authors attempt to provide.

As the use and relevance of robotics for countless scientific purposes grows all the time, research into the many diverse elements of the subject becomes ever more important and in demand. This volume examines in depth the most topical, complex issues of modelling and identification in robotics. The book is divided into three main parts. The !first part is devoted to robot dynamics modelling and identification of robot and load parameters, incorporating friction torques, discussing identification schemes, and presenting simulations and experiment al results of robot and load dynamic parameters identification. A general concept of robot programming language for research and educational purposes is examined and there is a detailed outline of its basic structures along with hardware requirements, which both constitute an open robot controller architecture. Finally a hybrid controller is derived, and several experimental results of this system are outlined. This impressive discussion of the topic covers both the theoretical and practical, illustrated throughout by examples and experimental results, and will be of value to anyone researching or practising within the field of robotics, automation and system i dentification or to control engineers.

Over the past decades, although stochastic system control has been studied intensively within the field of control engineering, all the modelling and control strategies developed so far have concentrated on the performance of one or two output properties of the system. such as minimum variance control and mean value control. The general assumption used in the formulation of modelling and control strategies is that the distribution of the random signals involved is Gaussian. In this book, a set of new approaches for the control of the output probability density function of stochastic dynamic systems (those subjected to any bounded random inputs), has been developed. In this context, the purpose of control system design becomes the selection of a control signal that makes the shape of the system outputs p.d.f. as close as possible to a given distribution. The book contains material on the subjects of: - Control of single-input single-output and multiple-input multiple-output stochastic systems; - Stable adaptive control of stochastic distributions; - Model reference adaptive control; - Control of nonlinear dynamic stochastic systems; - Condition monitoring of bounded stochastic distributions; - Control algorithm design; - Singular stochastic systems.A new representation of dynamic stochastic systems is produced by using B-spline functions to descripe the output p.d.f. Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage the transfer of technology in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of new work in all aspects of industrial control.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology impacts all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies . . . , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. Deregulation of electricity markets is a worldwide activity with leading and distinctive developments occurring in the European and US markets. The immediate impact of these changes is felt in the higher levels of the power production hierarchy where tools to aid short-term economic decision making are needed. At the lower levels of the production control hierarchy the impact is to demand much more flexible unit operation so that the determined short-term goals can be met. Allen and Illic have produced this useful monograph on the decision algorithms needed to determine unit commitment proflles over the shorter time frame of hours and days. The method of dynamic programming has been used and the work covers modelling, cost function and construction, an introduction to dynamic programming and a detailed assessment of its use. The monograph comes complete with programs in Appendix D and with other appendices giving the necessary supporting theory.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies ... , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. The last decade has seen considerable interest in reviving the fortunes of non­ linear control. In contrast to the approaches of the 60S, 70S and 80S a very pragmatic agenda for non-linear control is being pursued using the model-based predictive control paradigm. This text by R. Ansari and M. Tade gives an excellent synthesis of this new direction. Two strengths emphasized by the text are: (i) four applications found in refinery processes are used to give the text a firm practical continuity; (ii) a non-linear model-based control architecture is used to give the method a coherent theoretical framework.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies ... , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. Neural networks is one of those areas where an initial burst of enthusiasm and optimism leads to an explosion of papers in the journals and many presentations at conferences but it is only in the last decade that significant theoretical work on stability, convergence and robustness for the use of neural networks in control systems has been tackled. George Rovithakis and Manolis Christodoulou have been interested in these theoretical problems and in the practical aspects of neural network applications to industrial problems. This very welcome addition to the Advances in Industrial Control series provides a succinct report of their research. The neural network model at the core of their work is the Recurrent High Order Neural Network (RHONN) and a complete theoretical and simulation development is presented. Different readers will find different aspects of the development of interest. The last chapter of the monograph discusses the problem of manufacturing or production process scheduling.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology impacts all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies, .... , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. Micro-technology and modern communications technology are revolutionising many aspects of our daily lives and so it is not surprising that it is impacting societal transportation systems whether our highways, airways, seaways or railways. The Advances in Industrial Control series reported on these developments for long haul railway systems in a monograph by Howlett and Pudney (ISBN 3-S40-19990-X, 1995). Now it is the turn of transportation in a contribution from Pushkin Kachroo and Kaan Ozbay. The authors viewpoint is that this new set of transportation problems are control problems and that control engineers should be highly active in this field. Their volume covers all the aspects of modelling, problem formulation, and applies various control methodologies to solve the control problems formulated.

An in depth examination of many of the complex issues associated with planning and optimisation of intensity modulated radiotherapy treatment. It includes: a presentation of current practice, techniques and equipment used by medical physicists and others to deliver radiotherapy treatment; a systems modelling approach in the formulation of a beam model for optimisation, describing the effect of X-rays on human body tissues; a deterministic approach to the inverse problem in radiotherapy, based on weighted iterative least squares is modified to allow an adaptive scaling of the error to improve the performance of a general least squares algorithm; a guided random search methodology, based on genetic algorithms which is aimed at solving multi-objective optimisation problems is developed to optimise beam weight/wedge angle as well as coplanar beam orientation; the overall approach developed is demons trated practically using both traditional and modern measurement techniques.