Generating a Rule Set for the Fiber-to-Yarn Production Process by Means of an Efficiency-based Classifier System

Summary

One of the important production processes in the textile industry is the spinning process. Starting from cotton fibers, yarns are (usually) created on a rotor-spinning machine. The spinnability of a fiber is dependant on its quality and on the machine settings of the spinning machine. It would be a great benefit to be able to predict the spinnability and resulting strength of the yarn starting from a certain quality and from machine settings. To this end, two totally diiffferent modeling approaches can be considered: the so-called ‘white’ modeling and the so-called ‘black box’ modeling. In white modeling the process is described by mathematical equations, which are based upon (theoretical) physical knowledge of the process. Extensive physical information about the process is in this case available through physical, chemical or mechanical equations giving the user a thorough insight into the operation of the process. However, due to the large input (and output) dimensions of the fiber-to-yarn process and their complex interactions, no exact mathematical model of a spinning machine is known to exist nor is it likely that such a model will ever be constructed. A black box model, in contrast to white modeling, simply connects input parameters to the output without giving or containing any substantial physical information about the process itsellf Black box models have been successfully constructed by Pynckels et al. to predict the spinnability (Pynckels, 1995) and the characteristics (Pynckels, 1997) of the yarn using neural networks with a Backpropagation learning rule. Apart from the lack of physical information, these models also have no fault indication or measure of uncertainty about the results.