Dynamic matrix predictive control for a hydraulic looper system in hot strip mills

Controlling the looper height and strip tension is important in hot strip mills because these variables affect both the strip quality and strip threading. Many researchers have proposed and applied a variety of control schemes for this problem, but the increasingly strict market demand for strip quality requires further improvements. This work describes a dynamic matrix predictive control (DMC) strategy that realizes the optimal control of a hydraulic looper multivariable system. Simulation experiments for a traditional controller and the proposed DMC controller were conducted using MATLAB/Simulink software. The simulation results show that both controllers acquire good control effects with model matching. However, when the model is mismatched, the traditional controller produces an overshoot of 32.4% and a rising time of up to 2120.2 ms, which is unacceptable in a hydraulic looper system. The DMC controller restricts the overshoot to less than 0.08%, and the rising time is less than 48.6 ms in all cases.