Advanced soft sensor technology to be used for cold rolling mills

The use of data-driven soft sensors instead of expensive or even non-existent hardware sensors has become increasingly popular in the last two decades. Among others, they allow to reliably substitute the direct measurements with their predictions based on several related measured variables. The reason for such an indirect solution lies mostly in the absence or technical unsuitability of a reliable direct measurement of the variable of interest. This is the case of the real value of the rolling gap which substantially influences strip thickness when processed on a cold rolling mill. Although several successful approaches are being widely used for the thickness control, complementary solutions are sought permanently to improve control quality in anomalous situations and to further reduce off-tolerance parts of the rolled strip. Four partners have joined their expertise to obtain a qualitatively new soft sensor of this type in the framework of an international research project.