Toward Innovative Mill Design with Novel Hardware and Software Developments

by Remn-Min Guo, Waclaw Mielicki2, Paul Dinello3

Publisher - Tenova I2S, Yalesville

Category - General Novel

Mill design, which follows engineering rules, design concepts, and past design experiences, provides a fundamental blueprint of a mill. The mill design innovation focuses on performance improvement of mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, electronic, control, and programming components. Mechanical aspects include roll bending, roll shifting, hydraulic force cylinders, hydraulic systems, thermal crown, quick roll change, wedge pass line adjustment, spray header, side guides, threading tables, and so on. Control aspects include AGC, AFC, speed regulators, tension controllers, automatic stop control, rapid opening control, and other miscellaneous sequential type controllers. Quantum-leap improvement relies not only on hardware innovation, but, most importantly, on the engagement with advanced rolling models. Rolling models serve as theoretical foundation of mill design. Two basic models – the force model and the crown/shape model – dominate major tasks of mill design. The force model has been derived from von Karman equation with the slip/stick friction occurred in a non-circular contact arc which is a combination of a quasi-elliptic roll contour and local roll indentation. The crown/shape model is based on the bi-directional two-stage transport matrix theory. This method can solve the force and displacement distributions in the roll/roll and roll/strip interfaces so fast that it can be applied to the real-time control. The pass design model was generated on the basis of above two models as well as the rule-based pass design algorithm. Mill optimization of pass schedule crown distribution, roll profile determination, and on-line actuator set points have been developed according to two basic models and the weighted least square method. Combination of software and hardware development accelerates and optimizes the mill design. Similar concept can be extended to non-technical areas, such as standard proposal, spare parts management, and inventory control.

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