Modeling and Control of Multi Stage Rolling Mill Process

This demo shows plant modeling and controller design for a multi stage rolling mill process.

Sheet Rolling Mill processes involve progressive thickness reduction of continuous sheet metal in multiple stages. Some of the control variables of interest are exit thickness, throughput and the tension in the sheet as it passes from one stage to the other. Following page has links to the webinar series that cover plant modeling and controller design aspects:
https://www.mathworks.com/videos/series/simulating-a-multi-stage-rolling-mill-process-95155.html

This demo model takes advantage of physical modeling tools to model interaction of the sheet with rollers (for thickness reduction) and looper mechanisms (for tension regulation) as well as electric and hydraulic actuators driving the different machine elements. The plant modeling builds on the single stage rolling mill model implemented by Alec Stothert:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/13978-simulink%C2%AE-for-industrial-control-of-a-sheet-metal-rolling-application

A multi loop control architecture[1] is used to control the process variables using a combination of PID and other higher order controllers. A supervisory logic for fault detection and recovery is also implemented using Stateflow. Simulink PLC Coder can be used to generate IEC 61131-3 structured text from the supervisory logic and other controllers to deply on a PLC controller.

The plant modeling can be easily extended for a more general web processing application involving any other material like paper, carpet, tape etc.

[1] I.S. Choi, J.A. Rossiter and P.J. Fleming, “Looper and tension control in hot rolling mills: A survey,” Journal of Process Control 17 (2007) 509–521