An effective method for the single mode rolling planning problem of direct hot charge rolling

The quality of rolling unit planning affects production cost, product quality and productivity. The existing research methods are not applied in practice because the surface quality requirement of the hot rolling coil and the integrated production with two-strand caster and hot rolling machine are neglected, and the width of each waiting produced slab (dummy slab) of is pre-determined when it is casted on caster. At present, the average length of hot rolling plan units is smaller by manual method. Considering slab position limited in rolling unit because of the surface quality requirement, the integrated production with two-strand caster and hot rolling machine, and the selectable width of each waiting produced slab, a model for the single mode rolling unit planning problem of direct hot charge rolling (DHCR) is established. And a method based on a hybrid of variable neighborhood search and ant colony optimization is proposed. The experiment with industrial slab data shows that the results are better than those obtained by artificial methods.