Particle swarm optimization for estimation on mould oscillation for continuous casting process

Information about mould oscillation is very important for stable operations during continuous casting process. In this study, online measurement of mould oscillation was conducted on a slab continuous caster equipped with hydraulic oscillators. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm was adopted to estimate the mould oscillation status. To verify the feasibility and the performance of PSO, it is applied to solve inverse analysis in estimating the stiffness and damping of hydraulic oscillators, and calculated empty working forces are compared with measured ones. Furthermore, the effects of swarm size, searching space on the convergence velocity and computational accuracy of PSO are also investigated. The results confirm the potential of the proposed PSO approach and show its high computational efficiency and superiority.