Process Control Hot
Converteam process control technology in hot rolling includes automatic controls for plate and strip mills.
- Plate mill - Gauge, Width, Flatness Plan View & Accelerated Cooling.
- Strip mills - Gauge, Width, Profile, Flatness, Temperature, Cooling Rate.
Finishing Mill Gauge Control
Control of the thickness (gauge) in a Multi-stand Strip Finishing Mill requires elements of fast acting feed-back corrections and feed-forward controls. Converteam AGC features the use of model-based controls to optimise the speed of correction and maintain stability of strip tension and mass-flow.
Active compensation for Roll Eccentricity is provided on the later stands to attenuate roll thermal and roll grind errors.
A feed-forward control calculation makes use of measurements of stand load and strip temperature at the mill entry to pre-correct for the resulting effects on strip thickness by adjusting the latter rolling stands as the disturbance arrives.
Run-out-table Cooling Control
Control of the strip coiling temperature and the cooling trajectory are key parameters for the achievement of the final material properties. Converteam uses sophisticated model-based predictive controls to adjust cooling sprays along the run-out-table according to a slice temperature model of the strip during cooling.
The effectiveness of the sprays at each position is modelled according to the expected water vapour effect at the strip surface.
Additional control strategies are enabled for TRIP, Dual Phase and other complex steel products including modeling of the latent energy released during material phase change.