Optimal control of tension and thickness for tandem cold rolling process based on receding horizon control

Tandem cold rolling is a high-speed, high-efficiency, and complex production process. In some cases, minor interference or disoperation may result in large economic losses. To improve control performance and enhance system robustness, an optimal tension and thickness control method is presented in this paper. The control method is designed based on the receding horizon control (RHC) strategy, which has good tracking performance and strong constraint handling capability. First, a state space model is constructed to describe the tension and thickness of the tandem cold rolling process. Then, according to the system model, a RHC controller is designed and introduced into the control system. Based on field data, model verification and a series of experiments are completed. The results show that the proposed RHC control strategy can effectively reduce the effects of disturbances and has excellent control performance compared with the conventional proportion and integration (PI) control strategy.