Modeling and control of the hot rolling process of heavy plates in view of the elimination of ski ends

In heavy plate mills, the customer demands on product thickness and flatness quality are steadily increasing. Amongst others the quality is primarily influenced by the processing at the finishing mill stand where the thickness of plates of different widths and lengths is decreased in several passes. As a consequence, the improvement of the process control is a permanent subject of research. In the last years it has turned out that especially the development of accurate physics-based models, which serve as a basis for the controller design and for the system optimization, leads to very good results in view of a further improvement of the product quality. The goal of this thesis is the development of such models and control strategies for the hot rolling process at the plant of the AG der Dillinger Hüttenwerke. Thereby, special emphasis is placed on the derivation of online executable models for the plastic material behavior in the roll gap.