An Application of the Model Based Predictive Control in a Hot Rolling Mill

Abstract The conventional PI control scheme has been used widely to control the mass flow and strip tension in a hot strip mill. However, the mutual interaction between the looper angle and strip tension prevents the use of large control gains. Slow and linear actions from the controller may induce severe strip quality defects and instability of the process under abnormal operation conditions. To solve these problems a control scheme based on model based predictive control (MPC) is suggested because of its systematic handing of interactions and constraints. The LQMPC algorithm, which is a relatively conventional MPC design, is implemented for the looper and tension control using the closed loop paradigm (CLP).