Soft-Sensing in Batch Annealing Based on Finite Differential Method and Support Vector Regression

• Main Authors: Ján Kačur, Milan Durdán, Marek Laciak, Patrik Flegner
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Society of Polish Mechanical Engineers and Technicians 2019-12-01
• Series: Advances in Science and Technology Research Journal
• Subjects: annealing; steel coil; temperature measurement; soft-sensing; finite differences method; support vector regression
• Online Access: http://www.journalssystem.com/astrj/Soft-sensing-in-batch-annealing-based-on-finite-differential-method-and-support-vector,112542,0,2.html
• ISSN: 2080-4075; 2299-8624

The temperature of annealed steel coils is a determining variable of future steel sheets quality. This variable also determines the energy consumption in operation. Unfortunately, the monitoring of coil inner temperature is problematic due to the furnace environment with high temperature, coil structure, and annealing principle. Currently, there no exist measuring principles that can measure the temperature inside the heat-treated product in a non-destructive manner. In this paper, the soft sensing of inner temperature based on the theory of non-stationary heat conduction and approach based on Support Vector Regression (SVR) is presented. The results showed that a black-box approach based on the SVR could replace an analytic approach though with less performance. Several annealing experiments were performed to create a training data set and model performance improvement in the estimation of inner coil temperatures. The proposed software-based on nonstationary heat conduction can calculate the behavior of inner coil temperature from the measured boundary temperatures that are measured by thermocouples. Soft-sensing principles presented in this paper were verified in laboratory conditions and on data obtained from real annealing plant.