FACULTY OF AUTOMATION AND COMPUTER SCIENCE

Abstract of the PhD Thesis Control of metallurgical processes for producing seamless steel pipes. Application in Tenaris Silcotub Zalu.

PhD Student: eng. Vlad Murean Thesis advisor: Prof. Dr. Eng. Mihail Abrudean

The equipment intended for automation in this PhD thesis is the furnace with rotary hearth. The furnace with rotary hearth is the first basic aggregate in the technological flow for manufacturing seamless steel pipes in Tenaris Silcotub. Its role is to heat the blocks of slab billets, previously cut at the required length, from the environmental temperature to the rolling temperature. The furnace has two technical systems: the system of loading / unloading slab billets and the heating system. The objectives of the thesis were: 1. To find a solution for automatic control of the furnace rotation and of its loading / unloading with billets; 2. To find a solution for appropriate control of the temperature in the furnace. The thesis is structured in 7 chapters, as it follows: Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Heating technology. The furnace with rotary hearth Chapter 3 Automation of furnace servicing 1

Chapter 4 Analogical modelling and numerical simulation of thermal processes of the active sectors from the furnace with rotary hearth Chapter 5 Identification of elements that are part of the automatic control system of the furnace temperature Chapter 6 Analogical modelling and numerical simulation of the automatic control systems of the temperature value in the furnace active sectors Chapter 7 Conclusions The furnace with rotary hearth (figure 1) is a superior version of the bogie type furnace because the heating and cooling effects produced by the bogie are eliminated and the temperature loss is reduced. The furnace uses methane gas as fuel. In order to supply and to evacuate the blocks (the slab billets), the furnace has a loading machine and one for evacuation. The furnace also has five adjustable temperature sectors, a pre-heating sector without burners and a loading / unloading sector. The hearth of the furnace is rotated by two action mechanisms, placed in opposite position, out of the furnace.

Figure 1. Furnace with rotary hearth loaded on one row. The author did: Calculation of the transmission ratio between the engine and the crown gear of the hearth; Calculation of the furnace efficiency; Calculation of maximum disturbances that might occur in the furnace heating system. In the system of automatic control that was proposed, the quantity of slab billets introduced in the furnace was considered a disturbance. In the simulation application, the

disturbance was introduced as methane gas flow. The furnace efficiency refers only to the process of slab billet heating. The automation of loading, respectively unloading the furnace with rotary hearth contains two automatic systems that are correlated: The system of automatic control of the rotation step of the furnace hearth; The system of automation of furnace loading and unloading, more precisely the control system of the loading machine, respectively of the unloading machine. Taking into consideration that the driving motors are physically worn out due to the repeated wrapping and the pearling of contacts of hearth driving motors produces often stops, it is extremely necessary that the motors and their driving system should be replaced. In the thesis the proposal is that the hearth driving should be done by two servomotors of alternating current that are powered through some frequency converters and the hearth rotation should be sensed by incremental encoders. In this way it is possible to turn on and turn off the hearth in a silenced way, in ramp. It is very important how the converters parameters are set up. The automation system of the furnace loading and unloading, more precisely the control of the loading and unloading machines, contains two automatic subsystems that are correlated: The control subsystem of the loading machine; The control subsystem of the unloading machine.

The author did: The calculation of the hearth rotation step dependant on the blocks diameter; The calculation of a complete rotation of the hearth; The calculation of the advance and withdrawal of the loading machine towards, respectively from the furnace; The calculation of the advance and withdrawal of the unloading machine towards, respectively from the furnace; The control equipment that was used is a PLC Siemens (SIMATIC S7-300) that will run the application STEP 7 elaborated by the author. The application STEP 7 that does the control of the hearth rotation step, the control of the hearth rotation in case there is a failure in another equipment in the technological process

and the control of furnace loading, respectively unloading, was implemented and tested, and answered all the requirements of the text of this thesis. As an alternative to the solution that is presented here, I proposed to use a sensor to detect the heated block (solution that was not agreed due to a high number of disadvantages). It is also proposed a solution to position precisely the loading / unloading machines. This original solution can be very efficient if they want to use acceleration deceleration ramps of quite long duration, but the machines should run a quite short or very short distance. The main advantages of the proposed system are: The automatic running of the system. Running with clear superior performance (time and precision). Implementation of the version in which the furnace can be loaded on two rows. This version works on free choice with the one row loading, and the version selection works automatically according to the blocks dimensions. The possibility that the program can work automatically both when the block diameter is of 150 mm and when the block diameter is of 180 mm. Analysis of the case when there is a failure to another equipment from the technological process, without disturbing the good system running. Temporization of the furnace loading / unloading rate in such a way that it is the same with the one requested by the rolling process.

The modelling of the thermal processes was done taking into consideration the variation of temperature between the centre and the walls of the furnace. The analogical model of processes with distributed parameters can be expressed using equations or systems of equations with partial derivatives. In this way, besides the variable time (t), in the case of Cartesian coordinates, the independent variables (p), (q) and (r) are also introduced in the models of processes. If the functions y(t ,p ,q ,r) and 0000 (t, p, q, r) respect the Cauchy continuity, the general form of the equation that models the running of any active sectors of the furnace is presented in relation (1):

a 0000 y + a1000 + a1100 + a 0002

y y y y 2 y + a 0100 + a 0010 + a 0001 + a 2000 2 + t p q r t (1)

2 y 2 y 2 y 2 y 2 y + a 0200 2 + a 0110 + a 0020 2 + a 0011 + . tp p q q r p q 2 y 2 y 2 y 2 y + a + a + a = (t , p , q , r ) 1001 0101 1010 tr pr tq r 2

In relation (1) the coefficients (a.) are constant. In order to simplify the previous equation, the Cartesian variable (s) is defined ( s = s ( p, q, r ) = p 2 + q 2 + r 2 ) and
y = y (t , s ) ). Due to the turbulences inside the furnace, due to the small height of work space

and due to the control of temperature on each sector separately, it is not necessary to discuss the problem on directions (q) and (r) and results that (s = p). When the variable (s) is introduced, the equation with partial derivatives that describes the way the process works is:
a 00 y + a10 y y 2 y 2 y 2 y + a 01 + a 20 2 + a11 + a 02 2 = (t , s ) . ts t s t s

(2)

If the notation: xTS = (2) can be written as:

T +S y , where T = 0,1,2.., and S = 0,1,2,.., is introduced, relation t T s S

a 00 x00 + a10 x10 + a 01 x01 + a 20 x 20 + a11 x11 + a02 x02 = 00 .

(3)

A very important step is to determine the matrix of partial derivatives of state vector (M dpx ), that has the following general compact form: 1 M

x
M dpx [(n + N) (1 + M )] =

xS x TS

n N (4)

xT

The significance of the notations from relation (4) is detailed in the thesis. Using the analogical model of processes through (M dpx ), it was done the numerical simulation associated with Taylor series. In order to calculate the controllers that are going to assure the performances needed for a correct heating, both of working area and of the blocks, it is a need to elaborate the

mathematical models that describe the way of working in dynamic regime of the five thermally active processes from the furnace with rotary hearth. Due to the processes complexity, it was chosen the experimental identification of the processes. The identification procedure consists in applying a step variation to the methane gas flow that supplies the plant, for each heating process separately, and in measuring their dynamics. The experiment was done in parallel for all the five heating sectors. After the experimental curves were obtained, the identification method that was applied was the tangent method. The input parameter of the process is the gas flow at the entrance in the burners and the output parameter of the process is the sector temperature. The coefficients that were obtained after the experimental identification were used to determine the coefficients of the equations with partial derivatives. The values of the correlation coefficients between the experimental and simulated curves that were close to 100% and also the mean square errors that were very small certify the validity of the mathematical models that were elaborated. In order to control the temperature, the implemented control rule was of PID type. The general scheme of automatic control, which in particular can be applied in any of the five heating sectors of the furnace, is presented in figure 2.
u
~

PROCESS
w0 a0

R (PID)

c0

u0
EE

y 00

PDE II.2

m0

TM Figure 2. General scheme of automatic control.

Only one subscript attached to the elements from figure 2 shows the differentiation order of those elements in relation to the independent variable time (t). The activity of the thermal process is modelled with an equation with partial derivatives of 2nd order (PDE II.2) with two independent variables (time (t) and the space 6

variable (s) in Cartesian coordinates) and the running of the other elements from the control system is modelled through ordinary differential equations. There are two modelling variants: the first is based on the elimination of intermediary variables from the equations of the elements of the control system and in the second variant of analogical modelling the intermediate variables are not eliminated. After doing the calculations it results the two forms of the matrix of partial derivatives of the state vector. In relation (5) is presented the expression of the analytical solution for the equation with partial derivatives (PDE II.2), solution that proves relation (2):

y 00 (t , s) = K y F0T (t ) F0 S ( s) [u (t ) + u (t )] = K y F0T (t ) F0 S ( s ) u t (t ) .

(5)

In relation (5) u t (t) is the total gas flow (the sum between the execution signal and the disturbance signal) and K y is the proportionality constant of the process. Also F 0T (t) and

F 0 S (s) are exponential functions increasing non-periodically. The analytical solution is used
to determine the initial conditions and to check the correctness, respectively the accuracy of the results of the numerical simulation. In order to advance from sequence (k-1) to sequence (k) it is necessary to be used the Taylor series. The controllers were adjusted using the module criterion, adapted for the case of equations with partial derivatives. The performances of the automatic control system are imposed, considering the technical specifications of the furnace. The simulation application was developed in MATLAB environment. In the simulation, the model corresponding to the second method of analogical modelling was used. Some of the simulation results are presented in figures 3, 4, 5 and 6. The performances imposed upon the automatic control system, in case the disturbance does not occur, were fulfilled (figure 3). Also the controller rejects the disturbance effect when it occurs in the system. All the types of possible disturbances in case of the furnace were considered in the thesis, for example: the maximum step type disturbance (the response of the control system is presented in figure 4) or the combined disturbance (figure 5; the response of the control system is presented in figure 6). All the simulations were done considering the saturation limit of the execution signal (methane gas flow that interferes in the process).

140

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Figure 3. The analytical response and the numerical response of the automatic control system for sector 1.

Figure 4. The numerical response of the automatic control system for sector 1, when the maximum disturbance occurs after the sector was heated.

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The numerical response of the system, when the combined disturbance (halfsine + step) occurs after sector 1 was heated.

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Figure 5. The disturbance signal with combined shape (half-sine + step).

Figure 6. The numerical response of the system, when the combined disturbance (half-sine + step) occurs after sector 1 was heated.

The main personal contributions of the author are: Adaptation of a solution to control the rotation of the furnace and to adjust its temperature; Calculation of the rotation step of the hearth and the calculation of movement of the loading and unloading machines;

Implementation of STEP 7 application for the furnace control, considering all the factors that can interfere in the process;

Experimental identification of thermal processes in the case of the furnace with rotary hearth;

Analogical modelling through equations with partial derivatives and the numerical simulation associated to Taylor series of the thermal processes of the furnace;

Analogical modelling and numerical simulation of the automatic systems that control the temperature in the furnace;

The controllers adjustment for the 5 active sectors of the furnace using the module criterion;

Implementation of the simulation application in MATLAB environment and the testing of performances of the automatic control systems.