SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CONTROLLING A FLOW REGULATING VALVE IN A FILLING MACHINE

A method for controlling a flow regulating valve (6) of a filling machine (1), controlling the flow of pourable food product, envisages: receiving an inlet pressure measurement (PIN) from a pressure sensor (14); receiving an inlet flow measurement (FIN) from a flow meter (16); determining a control signal (SC) for controlling an operating position of the flow regulating valve (6) by combined contributions (C1, C2) of a flow feedback control module (22), receiving at its input a flow set point (FSP) and the inlet flow measurement (FIN) and generating a first control contribution (C1) indicative of a difference between the inlet flow measurement and the flow set point; and a flow feed-forward control module (20), receiving at its input the inlet pressure measurement (PIN) and the flow set point (FSP) and generating a second control contribution (C2) 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.