Water-cooled end-point boundary temperature control of hot strip via dynamic programming

In this paper, an end-point boundary temperature control approach for runout table cooling used in hot strip mills is presented. The system relies on a linearized model for describing heat radiated to the environment and heat transferred to cooling water. At first, a conventional feedforward control design to control the temperature at the end-point boundary, the only measurable controlled parameter, is presented. Subsequently, a modified control scheme which uses dynamic programming to minimize the temperature error at the end-point boundary is discussed in detail. System performance analysis via simulation is presented for both control schemes. Simulation results show that temperature error minimization by dynamic programming improves system performance.