Research on an optimization method for production scheduling of annular heating furnace

An annular heating furnace is a main energy consuming equipment in hot rolling production processes. The ultimate goals of heating production scheduling optimization are to reduce the gas consumption of the annular heating furnace, optimize the heating quality of the cylindrical billet, and improve the production efficiency per unit time. According to the production process and constraint conditions of the annular heating furnace for heating cylindrical billets, this paper proposes a continuous state machine, which adopts an 8-step continuous state machine and an improved genetic algorithm to realize the production scheduling optimization of the circular heating furnace. Through the comparison and verification with the actual production, the furnace dwell time of the cylindrical billet is effectively reduced, and the energy saving effect is significant.