The work presented herein describes the production of hot strip with special attention to the runout table. Because of its high capital and operating costs, a new principle in conveying the strip using an air cushion and a new cooling system for strip cooling have been proposed. Information given here is nearly all from available literature and the author's own experience with Hot Strip Mill production problems. To support the idea of using an air cushion for strip conveying, experimental equipment was designed and built which confirmed the feasibility of the method. A new cooling system was also proposed to meet the ever increasing requirements for better mechanical properties of hot strip. Runout table design application may serve as a guideline in designing new Hot Strip Mill runout table. / Thesis / Master of Engineering (ME)

Hot-rolled steel products occupy a key position, between upstream and downstream, in the steel industry chain. In this country, revenue of hot-rolled strip steel products maintains the greatest proportion among all steel products. Continuous pursuit of knowledge progress and growth plays a significant support to sustainable enterprises and gives them a vigorous operational strength in the face of international competition. During the hot strip steel manufacturing process, as the second-level standard of the computer integrated manufacturing system in a steel plant describes, in addition to those needed information related with real-time electronic control equipment dealt by process control computers, how does hot strip mill statistical process computer, abbreviated HSMSPC, utilize statistical analysis and information processing also challenges the future competitiveness. This research engages in a genuine hot strip mill statistical process computer system developed by a well-known steel corporation located in Taiwan, adopting structure behavior coalescence, abbreviated as SBC, six golden rules to build up the architecture-oriented hot strip mill statistical process computer model, abbreviated as AOHSMSPCM. AOHSMSPCM shall construct a hot strip mill statistical process computer system in an architecture-oriented way so that it is able to fully express the operational act and information extraction which cover system structures and system behaviors as well; subsequently, the hot strip mill statistical process computer system will produce higher added value in the face of the production line variability, replicate update, knowledge management, and so on. AOHSMSPCM begins with the analysis layer of system architecture. In this research, system structures and system behaviors are well described in the HSMSPC analysis layer. Besides this, easy to duplicate and extension of scalability are thoroughly elaborated in this research. Finally, this research comes up with "Strengthening the variability control of a hot strip mill", "Preserving assets of corporate knowledge" and "Upgrading process technologies of production lines" as three benefits that AOHSMSPCM contributes to the enterprise.

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Dans cette thèse, on s'est attaché à résoudre un certain nombre de problèmes qui apparaissent lorsqu'on traite des problèmes concrets de contrôle: phénomènes à plusieurs échelles de temps, discontinuités de la commande lors du basculement d'un correcteur à un autre, nécessité de concevoir un nombre limité de correcteurs différents malgré une gamme très importante des produits traités. Pour illustrer concrètement les résultats obtenus, nous nous sommes appuyés sur un exemple industriel concret, le contrôle de guidage de bande durant le processus de laminage dans un laminoir à chaud. D'abord, nous proposons une solution convexe au problème de commande optimale linéaire quadratique pour les systèmes linéaires à deux échelles de temps en temps discret. Ensuite, nous établissons des conditions suffisantes, formulées sous la forme d'inégalités matricielles linéaires, qui permettent de vérifier la stabilité d'un système à commutation à deux échelles de temps et de synthétiser des correcteurs stabilisants. Nous proposons aussi dans ce travail une méthode pour minimiser les discontinuités sur la commande dans le cadre des systèmes à commutation. Dans le contexte du contrôle de guidage de bande pour un laminoir à chaud, nous ne pouvons pas négliger l'influence des paramètres incertains, qui sont dus principalement au fait que ce genre de système traite une gamme de produits très large. Donc, dans la synthèse du correcteur, nous prenons en compte ces variations en divisant l'ensemble des produits en plusieurs familles et en synthétisant un correcteur différent pour chaque famille / This Ph.D. thesis deals with a certain number of problems arising in practical implementation of control systems: multi time scale phenomena, sudden modifications on the system dynamics, discontinuities on the control signal due to controller switchings, the need of design a limited number of controllers in spite of a wide variation on the physical parameters. In order to illustrate the validity of the obtained results, we resort to a real problem concerning the steel production framework, the robust steering control of a hot strip finishing mill. First, a convex solution of the linear quadratic control design for discrete two time scale systems is proposed. Hence, we address the stability problem of two time scale switched systems. We show that stability of the slow and fast switched subsystems under arbitrary switching rules does not imply the stability of the corresponding two time scale switched system in the singular perturbation form. An additional constraint, independent of the value of the singular parameter and of the switching rule, is provided in terms of linear matrix inequalities. We also introduce a bumpless transfer method for switched systems aiming at reducing the discontinuities on the control signal. Dwell time conditions assessing the asymptotic stability of the closed loop switched system are established. The practical contribution of this thesis, the robust steering control design, exploits most of previous results. The objective is to guarantee the stability of the hot strip mill system and improve the quality of the rolled products

Constitutive behavior models for steels are typically semi-empirical, however recently neural network is also being used. Existing neural network models are highly complex with a large network structure i.e. the number of neurons and layers. Furthermore, the network structure is different for different grades of steel. In the present study a simple neural network structure, 3:4:1, is developed which models flow behavior better than other models available in literature. Using this neural network structure constitutive behavior of 8 steels: 4 carbon steels, V and V-Ti microalloyed steels, an austenitic stainless steel and a high speed steel could be modeled with reasonable accuracy. The stress-strain behavior for the vanadium microalloyed steel was obtained from hot compression tests carried out at 850-1150 C and 0.1-60 s-1. It is found that a better estimate of the constants in the semi-empirical model developed for this steel could be obtained by simultaneous nonlinear regression. A model that can predict the effect of chemical composition on the constitutive behavior would be industrially useful for e.g., in optimizing rolling schedules for new grades of steel. In the present study, a neural network model, 5:6:1, is developed which predicts the flow behavior for a range of carbon steels. It is found that the effect of manganese is best accounted for by taking Ceq=C+Mn/6 as one of the inputs of the network. Predictions from this model show that the effect of carbon on flow stress is nonlinear. The hot strip mill at Jindal Vijaynagar Steel Ltd., Toranagallu, Karnataka, India, was simulated for calculating the rolling loads, finish rolling temperature (FRT) and microstructure evolution. DEFORM-2d a commercial finite element package was used to simulate deformation and heat transfer in the rolling mill. The simulation was carried out for 18 strips of 2-4 mm thickness with compositions in the range and 0.025-0.139 %C. The rolling loads and FRT could be calculated within 15 % and 15 C respectively. Analysis based on the variation in the roll diameter, roll gap and the effect of roll flattening and temperature of the roll showed that an error of 6 % is inherent in the prediction of loads. Simulation results indicated that strain induced transformation to ferrite occurred in the finishing mill. The microstructure after rolling was validated against experimental data for ferrite microstructure and mechanical properties. The mechanical properties of steels with predominantly ferrite microstructures depend on the prior austenite grain size, strain retained before transformation and cooling rate on the run-out table. A parametric study based on experimental data available in literature showed that a variation in cooling rate by a factor of two on the run-out table gives rise to only a 20 MPa variation in the mechanical properties.

Cette thèse porte sur l’amélioration du laminage à chaud, un procédé de fabrication sidérurgique permettant de transformer une brame de métal (10m de long, 1.5m de large et 250mm d’épaisseur) en une bande de tôle bobinée (1000m de long, 1m de large et 2mm d’épaisseur). Afin d’obtenir certaines propriétés mécaniques et de faciliter la phase de laminage, la brame est réchauffée à 1300°C et dégrossi avant d’être envoyé vers le train finisseur où elle est laminée en passant successivement dans plusieurs cages (ensemble de cylindres qui écrasent le métal) et qui permettent de réduire l’épaisseur à la valeur finale souhaitée. Le produit est finalement refroidi puis bobiné avant d’être envoyé au client. La thèse se focalise sur l’amélioration du train finisseur en proposant un contrôle du frottement entre la bande et les cylindres de travail à l’aide d’une lubrification. La lubrification consiste à déposer de l’huile sur le cylindre en vaporisant une émulsion d’eau et d’huile. L’huile déposée modifie l’interface entre la bande et le cylindre et diminue le coefficient de frottement. Cette diminution du coefficient de frottement a plusieurs avantages : elle permet de réduire l’usure des cylindres, d’améliorer l’état de surface de la bande, de réduire l’effort nécessaire de laminage donc la consommation d’énergie et d’augmenter la capacité du train. A l’inverse, un frottement trop bas dû à une lubrification trop importante peut causer un patinage de la bande entrainant l’arrêt du train. Il est donc important de contrôler le niveau de frottement de manière sécurisée. La conception du contrôle s’est faite à travers deux principales étapes : La modélisation et l’identification de l’effet de la lubrification sur le coefficient de frottement, la conception du contrôle du frottement / This thesis is about the improvement of the hot rolling process. This steelmaking process turns a slab (10m long, 1.5m wide, 250mm thick) into a coiled strip (1000m long, 1m wide, 2mm thick). To obtain some metallurgical properties and to make the rolling easier, the slab is heated up to 1300 ° C and roughly rolled before going to the finishing mill. In the finishing mill the strip is rolled through successive stands (set of rolls) to reduce the thickness to its final desired value. The product is finally cooled down and coiled before shipping it to the customers. The thesis focuses on the enhancement of the finishing mill through a friction control between the strip and the work rolls using lubrication. The lubrication consists in building up oil on the rolls by spraying an emulsion of water and oil. The deposited oil changes the contact interface between the strip and the roll and decreases the friction coefficient. The reduction of the friction presents the advantages of: reduce the roll wear, enhance the strip surface quality, decrease the rolling force (reduce then the energy consumption) and increase the mill capability. In the other hand, an insufficient amount of friction due to an overabundance of lubrication can induce a slippage of the strip leading to a stop of the mill. It is important to control the amount of friction in a secure way. The design of the controller was done through two main steps: Modeling and identification of the effect of lubrication on the friction coefficient, designing the friction control