Development of FEM Simulator Combined with Camber Reducing Output Feedback Fuzzy Controller for Rough Rolling Process

In hot rolling processes, the rough rolling process is an essential step for making the medium size bar for final strip products. After rough rolling, the bar usually has longitudinal bending called camber owing to several reasons. Camber should be reduced because it may cause various problems including clogging of finishing mill and strip edge folds. The difficulties to designing a camber-reducing controller are to have a good mathematical model of the rolling process and, consequently, lack of an appropriate validation scheme of the designed control algorithm before applying it to a real system. In this paper, a three-dimensional simulator for the rough rolling process using FEM (Finite Element Method) is constructed. An output feedback fuzzy controller that does not require a mathematical model is then designed to reduce camber including the lateral bar movement called side-slipping by tilting the roll. A FEM simulation combined with the proposed controller is carried out to show the effectiveness of this scheme. The results show that camber and side-slipping can be effectively reduced while achieving a reasonable wedge profile.