This thesis is concerned with the study of an adaptive control to the electro-hydraulic servo indexing system of a flexible forging center. A flexible forging center consists of a forging machine and an indexing system; the role of the indexing system is to rotate a workpiece, whose inertia changes during each forging step, fast and accurately to a desired position. Assuming the change of inertia during one forging step is small, controller gains are adjusted by using estimated parameter at one step ahead and closed-loop system response equation: so that the initial part of system response could be maintained as desired values regardless of the change of system parameter. Estimations of the model parameter are obtained by the least square method using digital computer. The performance of proposed adaptive control algorithm is investigated experimentally and compared with the system response of P.I.D control. It is shown that, applying adaptive control to an electro-hydraulic servo indexing system, the workpieces can be rotated fast and accurately to the desired positions compared to conventional P.I.D control."
