Robust steering control of hot strip mill
Résumé
In this paper, a robust steering control is proposed as a means to guarantee the stability of a hot strip finishing mill and im- prove its performances. The aim of the rolling process is to obtain a metal strip which is uniform and at the desired thickness. The lat- eral movement of the strip may reduce the quality of the product and damage the rolls. Hence, this displacement must be limited to improve process reliability. Since a hot strip mill treats products with very heterogeneous characteristics, a significant database was created and divided into different families of products. A method for reducing the numerical complexity of the problem exploiting the relation between the different product parameters is also pre- sented. This method yields a convex stabilisation problem. Hence, for each family, a different robust controller is designed. Simu- lation and experimental results concerning the ArcelorMittal hot strip mill of Eisenhüttenstadt are presented.