Tandem Hot Metal Rolling Mill Control: Using Practical Advanced Methods (Advances in Industrial Control)

Tandem Hot Metal Rolling Mill Control is a response to the significant control engineering challenges posed by the nature and circumstances of the hot metal strip rolling process. The process is large, complex, multivariable and nonlinear with significant disturbances and subject to multiple situationally dependent time delays all of which are exacerbated by the demands of an ever-more-competitive marketing environment for its product.

The book provides innovative solutions not available with previously existing methods of control. It introduces new advanced control methods, including a nonlinear control method based on an advanced state-dependent Riccati equation technique coupled with virtual rolling to improve performance during various regimes of mill operation.

The book begins with a brief history of metal rolling and an overview of the tandem hot metal rolling process. It then discusses process models, including physical-system and state-space equations, and control methods currently being used in tandem rolling. The exposition of the new advanced control method uses figures and simulations to facilitate thorough understanding of the methods and their applicability in the real world. The final chapter concludes with a brief discussion of variable-speed drives as typically used in modern installations.

Although sufficient mathematical treatment is provided to support the development of novel concepts, the presentation is not highly mathematical, making the text readily understandable and useful to a variety of readers in both academic and practical engineering milieux.

Dr John Pittner, is a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. He gained his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2006. He is a registered Professional Engineer through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is the lead author of over 45 peer-reviewed conference and archival journal papers on control of metals processing, as well as the book Tandem Cold Metal Rolling Mill Control Using Practical Advanced Methods. He received the US National Science Foundation research grant for investigation of novel control method for tandem hot metal strip mills and owns 4 US patents on control of metals processing applications. He is a peer reviewer for over 40 technical conference and journal papers including IEEE Industry Application Society Transactions, the Journal of Process Control, and Automatica.

Professor Marwan A. Simaan is the Florida 21st Century Chair and Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Central Florida, and former Chair and Bell of PA/Bell Atlantic Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He received his PhD in EE from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1972. His research covers a broad spectrum of topics in control, optimization, and signal processing and has been funded mostly by NSF, DARPA, AFOSR, ONR, and a variety of industrial sources including Gulf Oil and Alcoa.  His publications include 5 books, 145 archival journal papers and 245 conference papers.  He is a member of US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a Life Fellow of the IEEE, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He is a Distinguished Alumnus and a recipient of the Award for Distinguished Service in Engineering at the University of Illinois. Dr. Simaan is a registered Professional Engineer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.