Rolling mill temperature control

A controller architecture is proposed for temperature control in a rolling mill based on the internal model principle. It is applied to the control of material exit temperature using the transportation speed to influence the amount of heat loss. The internal model is used to achieve a fast response with minimal overshoot. The controller tuning is carried out using constraints on the sensitivity function to map out the feasible controller parameter region. A graphical display of the controller parameter region is useful when parameters are manually changed. The robustness of the controller to parametric uncertainty is also considered. Results are shown from the application of this controller to the temperature controller for a hot strip rolling mill.