A Simple Slab Temperature Model

 y
Lars Malcolm Pedersen and Bj
orn Wittenmark

Abstract

The model presented in this paper has been used for predicting the slab core tem-
perature in several applications at The Danish Steel Works Ltd.
The model has the advantages that it is simple and only contains a minimum of
physical parameters, which makes it easy use and adapt to slab temperature mea-
surements.
The model has been veried using 11 data sets covering three dierent slab thick-
nesses and two dierent furnaces.
The model is used for on-line prediction of the slab temperature of furnace no. 1 and
has been used for redesigning the slab temperature control algorithm for furnace
no 2. at The Danish Steel Works Ltd. Both applications has lead to signicant
improvements in the performance of the furnace and rolling mill control systems.

1. Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to describe a simple model the slab temperatures for
the two furnaces in the Plate Mill of The Danish Steel Works Ltd. The model has
been used for controller design of the slab temperature control system for furnace
no. 2 and is used for on-line prediction of the slab temperatures of furnace no. 1.
The model is based on the physical equations for the heating process and therefore
only has a few parameters. The model structure is simple and this implies that it
can be used for controller design and furthermore is easy to implement.
The need for on-line prediction of the slab temperature is due to the fact that it is
not feasible to measure this variable during normal operation of the furnace. This it
makes it necessary to calculate the slab temperature instead of measuring it.
The model has been veried on 11 slab temperature measurement series covering
two furnace types and three dierent slab thicknesses and good agreement between
model output and slab temperature measurements are obtained in all cases.
For more details on modeling and controller design please refer to [4].
 The Danish Steel Works Ltd., 3300 Frederiksvrk, Denmark, Email: lar@dansteel.dk
y Lund Institute of Technology, Department of Automatic Control, Sweden, Email:
bjorn@control.lth.se

2000-02-09 14:46 1
2. The Reheat Furnaces

The Plate Mill at The Danish Steel Works Ltd. has a capacity of approximately
500.000 tons/year and has two reheat furnaces
 Furnace no. 1 which is a 15 ton/hour 13 m long pusher furnace with two
tracks. This furnace is controlled by a BBC DP800 PLC and the slab temper-
atures are calculated by a a Digital VAX 3100. Input to the slab temperature
calculation is the furnace temperature measured by thermocouples in the fur-
nace roof.
 Furnace no. 2 which is a 130 ton/hour 46 m long walking hearth furnace with
three tracks. This furnace is controlled by an ABB FOCS slab temperature
control system which also calculates and controls the slab temperatures, see
[2]. The slab temperatures are calculated by the ABB FOCS system, from
furnace temperature, fuel ow, and air ow measurements.
The slabs heated in the furnaces have three dierent thicknesses: 100mm, 200mm
and 260mm with typical residence times of 2 hours, 4 hours, and 5 hours respectively.
Furnace no. 1 is used for heating 100mm and 200mm slabs, while furnace no. 2 is
used for heating 200mm and 260mm slabs.
When a slab is discharged from one of the furnaces a calculated temperature is sent
to the rolling mill computer. The model described in the following is used in the
Digital VAX 3100 for predicting the slab temperatures in furnace no. 1 the model
has furthermore been used in the controller design for the ABB FOCS system on
furnace no. 2. For further details please refer to [4].

3. The Slab Temperature Measurements

The data collection device is a Thermophil STORTM which is a portable data collec-
tion unit made especially for measuring slab temperatures when transported through
the reheat furnace.
The slab temperatures are measured using steel coated thermocouples mounted in
holes that go 10%, 50%, and 90% into the slab in the thickness direction. A fourth
thermocouple is used for measuring the temperature of the furnace atmosphere on
the top side of the slab. When the test slab is discharged from the furnace, the data
collection device is removed and the data are transferred to a PC using a serial link.
For furnace no. 1 the measurement device is kept outside the furnace while the slab
temperatures and furnace atmosphere temperatures are measured by long thermo-
couples which are dragged through the furnace by the slab.
When measuring the slab temperatures in furnace no. 2 the Thermophil is put into
a metal box lled with water. The box is mounted in a special made test slab, see
Figure 1, and transported through the furnace in the usual way. The only constraint
is that the test slab maximally can stay in the furnace until the water is evaporated,
which is about 7 hours.

4. The Slab Temperature Model

Inspired by [5], [1], and [2] we use a model where the slab temperature is considered
homogeneous. This is obtained by considering a steel block with uniform tempera-

2000-02-09 14:46 2
 Figure 1 The data collection device mounted on a test slab. The wires going into the slab
are the steel-coated thermocouples. The water box is covered with heat protective material
to minimize the exposure to heat radiation.

ture T , unit area, and thickness h. The result is the following nonlinear dierential
equation for the slab core temperature
1


t Tt4 (t) T (t)4
dT
= + t (Tt (t) T (t)) + b (T (t) Tb ) (1)
dt h(T )cp (T )

where h is the slab thickness, and  and cp are the material parameters obtained
from [3], and  is Boltzmann's constant. The variables Tt and Tb are the ambient
temperatures of the slab top and bottom sides, respectively.
The rst two terms on the right hand side of (1) represent the energy ows to the
slab by radiation and convection, respectively, while the third term represents the
energy losses to the slab transport system. This term is new in the model compared
to the models in the references above.
If the model is to be executed in a computer program the term dT =dt can be replaced
by (T (k) T (k 1))=Æ where k is sample number and Æ is the sampling time. This
is the way the model is implemented for furnace no. 1.

5. Adapting the Model to the Measurements

We have 9 temperature measurement series for furnace no. 2 and two measurement
series for furnace no. 1 available for nding the parameters of (1). Note that we in
the following, only operate with one set of parameters for each furnace independent
of the slab thickness h.
The rst analysis of the data is how well the furnace atmosphere temperature col-
lected by the data logger corresponds with the temperature measurements in the
furnace roof. It turns out that there normally is good agreement between the two
temperatures, see Figure 1. Note that this check is only performed for furnace no. 2.

2000-02-09 14:46 3
 Modeling Result Walking Hearth Furnace h=260

1000

Temperature C
o

Center Temperature, Measured

500
Atmosphere Temperature
Center Temperature, Calculated
Furnace Roof Temperature

0 2 4 6
Time h

Figure 2 Results of adapting the parameters of equation (1) for the slab core temperature
of a 260 mm slab heated in furnace no. 2. The plot shows the furnace roof temperature Tt ,
the furnace atmosphere temperature Ta, the measured slab core temperature T50% , and the
simulated temperature T found using (1).

Using the above observation we use the temperatures from the roof thermocouples
in furnace no. 2 as Tt , while we use the atmosphere temperature measured by the
data logger for Tt in furnace no. 1. In both cases Tb can be considered constant.
The value of Tb together with the parameters t , t , and b are found by simulat-
ing (1) using the Matlab-routine ode45 which is a solver for nonlinear dierential
equations. The parameters of (1) are found by and minimizing the error between
the slab core temperature measurement T50% and model output T using the Mat-
lab optimization routines leastsq, which is a nonlinear least squares method, and
fmins, which is a simplex method.
In practice the optimization routines nds the best parameter values by iteratively
adjusting the parameters in a way considered feasible, solve the dierential equation
(1) and comparing the result to the measurements . The nal result is the parameter
values which gives the best agreement between model and measurements.
The results of the parameter adaption are shown in Figures 2, 3, and 4. For furnace
no. 1 the results are based on one parameter set for both 100mm and 200 slabs.
Note the good between model output T and slab temperature measurements T50% ,
despite the dierent slab thicknesses and furnace structures. For the 200 mm slab
from furnace no. 1 in Figure 4 there is a deviation in the middle of the measurement
campaign, the deviation, however, vanishes half an hour before discharge. The results
for the eight other data sets from furnace no. 2 are similar to the results shown in
Figure 2, for further details please refer to [4].

6. Conclusions

The purpose of this paper has been to present a model for predicting the slab core
temperature when it is heated by a steel reheat furnace.

2000-02-09 14:46 4
 Modeling Result Pusher Furnace, h=100mm

1000

Temperature oC

Center Temperature, Measured

500 Atmosphere Temperature
Center Temperature, Calculated

0
0 1 2
Time h

Figure 3 Results of adapting the parameters of equation (1) for the slab core temper-
ature of a 100 mm slab heated in furnace no. 1. The plot shows the furnace atmosphere
temperature Ta, the measured slab core temperature T50% , and the simulated temperature
T found using (1).

The main features of the model is that it has good reproducibility and is robust in
the sense that it give accurate predictions for dierent slab dimensions and reheat
furnaces. Since the model has a simple structure and only four parameters it is easy
and fast to determine the parameters given slab temperature measurements for the
furnace to be modeled.
The model has been used for determining the heating curve, feed forward tables,
and parameters of the PI-controllers of the ABB FOCS slab temperature control
system, see [2]. The results are a capacity increase of 1% due to an improved dynamic
performance of the control system and an energy saving of 4.5% due to a later heating
curve and lower furnace temperatures during production stops.
The use of the model for predicting the slab temperatures of furnace no. 1 has lead
to a reduction of the standard deviation of the rolling force calculation from 112
tons to 82 which is a 36% decrease. Before the model was used a constant slab
temperature was used for the rolling force calculation.

Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the Danish Steel Works Ltd., Frederiksvrk, Den-
mark.

7. References

[1] F. Hollander and S. P. A. Zuurbier. Design, development and performance of

on-line computer control in a 3-zone reheating furnace. Iron and Steel Engineer,
pages 44 { 52, January 1982.

2000-02-09 14:46 5
 Modeling Result Pusher Furnace, h=200mm

1000

Temperature C
o

Center Temperature, Measured

Atmosphere Temperature
Center Temperature, Calculated
500

0
0 1 2 3 4
Time h

Figure 4 Results of adapting the parameters of equation (1) for the slab core temper-
ature of a 200 mm slab heated in furnace no. 1. The plot shows the furnace atmosphere
temperature Ta, the measured slab core temperature T50% , and the simulated temperature
T found using (1).

[2] Bo Leden. A control system for fuel optimization of reheating furnaces. Scandi-
navican Journal of Metallurgy, 15:16 { 24, 1986.

[3] Bo Leden. User's manual STEELTEMP-IE

c MEFOS, Lule, January 1999.
.

[4] Lars Malcolm Pedersen. Modeling and Control of Plate Mill Processes. PhD
thesis, Department of Automatic Control, Lund Institute of Technology, April
1999.
[5] Rudolf Pichler and Rupert Langer. Automation concept for the control of
reheating furnaces in rolling mills. Metallurgical Plant and Technology, pages
68 { 75, 1989.

2000-02-09 14:46 6