LEVELING CONTROL DEVICE, ROLLING EQUIPMENT PROVIDED WITH SAME, AND LEVELING CONTROL METHOD

A leveling control apparatus 150 includes a torque acquisition unit 161 that calculates, from torques measured by shapemeters 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, and 96 individually provided between a plurality of rolling stands, a torque distribution applied in a widthwise direction of a steel sheet 1 between each adjacent ones of the plurality of rolling stands, a primary component computing unit 162 that calculates a tension distribution in the widthwise direction from the calculated torque distribution and calculates a primary component in a case where a tension distribution of the steel strip 1 is represented by a polynomial from the tension distribution, a leveling correction amount computing unit 163 that calculates, on the basis of the calculated primary components, a leveling correction amount for a rolling stand immediately preceding on the rolling upstream side among the plurality of rolling stands, and a leveling amount changing unit 164 that changes, on the basis of the calculated leveling correction amounts, the leveling amounts in order toward the rolling upstream side from the (last - 1)th stand among the plurality of rolling stands.