Disturbance Attenuation in a Hot Strip Rolling Mill via Feedforward Adaptive Control

Abstract

A control scheme for the attenuation of input disturbances in the finishing mill (FM) train of a hot steel strip rolling mill is considered. The scheme has been successfully commissioned on an operational mill, with proven performance benefits, illustrated herein. It operates during thread of the mill train: mill references for unthreaded stands are refined based on information derived from the threaded stands. By this means, both thickness and flatness performance on the leading end of the strip may be improved, though the latter requires flatness control actuators such as roll bending or sideshifting. In the absence of flatness actuators, the scheme can be configured so that gauge performance is improved without sacrificing flatness performance.