Industrial Automatic Control Systems and Controllers Annotation << Back On Effi ciency Estimation of PIcontroller Neural Tuner Implemented for Siemens Simatic S7-300/400 to Control Muffle Electroheating Furnace Yu.I. Eremenko, A.I. Glushchenko, A.V. Fomin Automation devices and programmable logic controllers (PLC) development allows to implement optimal or adaptive control methods as a program for PLC. The main scope of this research is to estimate efficiency of a PI-controller neural tuner implemented as a software functional module for Siemens Simatic PLC to control laboratory muffle electroheating furnace. It functions in two modes: setpoint schedule following and disturbances attenuation. The furnace is loaded by a steel cast during experiments to change its dynamics. Disturbances infl uencing both a control action signal and the plant output are used. The neural tuner short description is shown. The results of its functioning are compared to a control system, which is based on a conventional PI-controller with constant parameters. Having analyzed the results, the conclusion is made that the tuner application allows to reduce averagely experiment time by 7,8 % for transients and 54,9 % for disturbances rejection, and energy consumption by 10,1 %. Keywords: neural tuner; adaptive control; heating plants; transients; disturbance rejection; PI-controller; Siemens Simatic. Contacts: E-mail: erem49@mail.ru, E-mail: strondutt@mail.ru, E-mail: verner444@yandex.ru Pp. 47-54.