High Speed Profile Data Analysis in the Hot Strip Mill

by Christopher Burnett

Publisher - Thermo Fisher Scientific, Chelmsford, MA USA

Category - Engineering & IT

Online Measurement of thickness profile has evolved dramatically since the early days of scanning x-ray gauges. Consumers of flat sheet steel demand the highest quality from their suppliers and uniform strip thickness is a major contributor in their assessment. If there are any questions regarding the final quality of the supplied product, modern data archiving allows producers to review recorded process parameters starting from its origins in the liquid phase to its final pass on in the cold mill. Any dimensional abnormalities can be traced upstream in the rolling process ultimately to the hot strip mill. The hot strip steel mill is universally considered one of the harshest environments for process instrumentation and sensors but as the material speed and temperature increases, so does the importance of the measurement values. This paper will describe a high speed stereoscopic x-ray profile gauge with the ability to determine both the cross- thickness profile and the physical position of the strip in space every 5 milliseconds. By using a narrow x-ray fan beam to measure the strip, the system can record the height of each point of the strip in the time domain from which the flatness, or shape, of the strip can be calculated. Analysis of these values in real time presents unique opportunity to not only control thickness profile and strip shape, but monitor for issues that impact strip quality. Millions of data points are recorded for each strip produced and analysing terabytes of data for real-time operator decision making requires an application that is both robust and visually user-friendly. Online Measurement of thickness profile has evolved dramatically since the early days of scanning x-ray gauges. Consumers of flat sheet steel demand the highest quality from their suppliers and uniform strip thickness is a major contributor in their assessment. If there are any questions regarding the final quality of the supplied product, modern data archiving allows producers to review recorded process parameters starting from its origins in the liquid phase to its final pass on in the cold mill. Any dimensional abnormalities can be traced upstream in the rolling process ultimately to the hot strip mill. The hot strip steel mill is universally considered one of the harshest environments for process instrumentation and sensors but as the material speed and temperature increases, so does the importance of the measurement values. This paper will describe a high speed stereoscopic x-ray profile gauge with the ability to determine both the cross- thickness profile and the physical position of the strip in space every 5 milliseconds. By using a narrow x-ray fan beam to measure the strip, the system can record the height of each point of the strip in the time domain from which the flatness, or shape, of the strip can be calculated. Analysis of these values in real time presents unique opportunity to not only control thickness profile and strip shape, but monitor for issues that impact strip quality. Millions of data points are recorded for each strip produced and analysing terabytes of data for real-time operator decision making requires an application that is both robust and visually user-friendly.

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