System and method for controlling a flow regulating valve in a filling machine

A method for controlling a flow regulating valve of a filling machine configured to form composite packages from a multilayer composite packaging material and to fill the composite packages with a pourable food product, wherein the regulating valve controls the flow of the pourable food product filling the packages, the method comprising:

• receiving an inlet pressure measurement of the pourable food product from a pressure sensor;
• receiving an inlet flow measurement of the pourable food product from a flow meter;
• determining a control signal for controlling an operating position of the flow regulating valve by combined contributions of:
• a flow feedback control module, receiving at its input a flow set point and the inlet flow measurement and generating a first control contribution indicative of a difference between the inlet flow measurement and the flow set point;
• a flow feed-forward control module, receiving at its input the inlet pressure measurement and the flow set point and generating a second control contribution as a function of the flow set point and inlet pressure measurement, using stored fluid-dynamic maps,
• wherein the flow feed-forward control module is configured to use the stored 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 said different operating conditions and/or pourable food product.