Journal of Metallurgical Engineering (ME) Volume 3 Issue 1, January 2014

doi: 10.14355/me.2014.0301.01

www.me-journal.org

Real-Time Supervision of Annealing Process

in Stainless Steel Production Lines
Carlos G. Spnola*1, J.M.Caero-Nieto2, C.J.Galvez-Fernandez3, J.M. Bonelo4
Department of Electronics, University of Mlaga
Bulevar Louis Pasteur 35, 29071-Mlaga, Spain
*1,2,3

Acerinox Europa S.A.U.

Factora del Campo de Gibraltar, 11370- Los Barrios (Cdiz), Spain
4

cspinola@uma.es; 2jmcanero@ctima.uma.es; 3carlosgalvezfernandez@gmail.com; 4josemaria.bonelo@acerinox.com

*1

Abstract
Annealing is an important process in the production of
stainless steel coils. This paper presents a system and its
supervision in production lines. The model is based on
continuous data of line speed, temperatures throughout the
annealing furnace, and the detection of the start of each coil
entering the furnace. Annealing functions have been
proposed whose integration along the space-time trajectory
provides a powerful supervision tool for quality control
engineers. This model has been checked and adjusted with
continuous data of magnetic remanence in the case of ferritic
stainless steel.

These areas must be identified, cut and discarded

before processing the sheet in the following lines to
reduce production costs and increase productivity.

Keywords
Magnetic Remanence; Process Models; Production Systems;
Quality Control; Steel Industry; Supervisory Control

Introduction
Stainless steel as a material with high added value and
increasing importance is manufactured and delivered
mainly as cold rolled sheets of specific thickness
according to its intended use [Erdem and Taptik, 2005].
The desired thickness is achieved in the hot and cold
rolling mills, where the steel sheets are treated by
extrusion, stretching and rolling. These processes
deform the crystal metallic structure of steel, leaving it
brittle and breakable [Quach et al., 2009]. Subsequently, steel sheets are usually processed in
annealing lines, where it is heated in order to recover
their metallurgical and mechanical properties.
The annealing process is performed in a tunnel
furnace several tens of meters long, where the stainless
sheet is heated as it is conveyed through the furnace
(see FIG. 1). The quality of the final product depends
very much on the processing conditions, such as
furnace temperature and the time the material is
within the furnace [Carvalho et al., 2006]. Changes in
these conditions could produce a bad annealing on
specific areas of the sheet that are not easy to detect.

FIG. 1 AN ANNEALING FURNACE

The production units are stainless steel sheets in coils

hundred or thousand meter length. Many coils can be
annealed in a day; therefore, it is difficult to supervise
them all. Moreover, if the line speed or the
temperature in the furnace vary due to operational
events, it is difficult to determine which parts of the
affected coils have not been well annealed.
Several research works have been proposed for
modelling control and optimization of the continuous
annealing furnace [Li et al., 2006; Tian et al., 2004;
Yoshitani and Hasegawa, 1998]. Nevertheless, an
accurate model to simulate the complex thermal
reactions is very hard to obtain due to the number of
parameters the model depends on [Li et al., 2006].
In addition to this, the proposed models do not
consider the impact on the quality of the steel when
the processing conditions deviate from the ideal ones.
The main contribution of this work is a model to
supervise the quality of the manufactured steel sheets.

www.me-journal.org

Journal of Metallurgical Engineering (ME) Volume 3 Issue 1, January 2014

This model detects in real time bad annealed areas

making use of the available real time production
signals and the ideal annealing setting established by
quality control engineering. This model has been
tested in a real stainless steel production line and
validated regarding the magnetic remanence, an
indicator of the metallurgical properties of steel.
The outline of this paper is structured as following.
The Annealing Process describes the annealing process
of stainless steel as well as the magnetic remanence.
Next, a space-time model describing the production
conditions during the annealing process is proposed in
Temperature Space-Time Model. Then, a supervision
model for the steel quality is presented in Annealing
Model. This model is validated regarding magnetic
remanence in Validating of Annealing Model. Finally,
Results and Conclusions presents a summary and our
main conclusions.
The Annealing Process
A continuous annealing production line is a highly
efficient heat treatment process for cold-rolled sheets
in steel works and consists of several steps, including
annealing, soaking, and cooling. Among these steps,
the annealing is typically that has higher influence on
the productivity and quality of the steel [Li et al., 2006].
The annealing process requires exposing the steel to
high temperatures during a specific time in order to
recover their metallurgical and mechanical properties,
as well to reduce the hardness, yield strength, and
tensile strength of the stainless steel [Bailey and Hirsch,
1962]. The temperature from which the grain
microstructure of the steel is re-crystallized is called
the annealing temperature , typically between 900
and 1100, depending on the carbon content and steel
grade as well as thickness and width of the coils. If the
material is exposed to temperatures higher than or
during a time longer than required, an excess of
annealing appears, otherwise, a defect of annealing is
achieved. In both cases, the steel properties are not
totally recovered, and therefore the quality of the final
product is considerably reduced or even scrap.
The annealing is performed in a tunnel furnace
composed of several heating zones. Each zone has a
set of independent gas burners and temperature
sensors for their upper and lower part. As can be seen
in Fig. 2, steel sheets are inserted in the entrance and
conveyed through the furnace at a specific speed. The
dimension of these sheets is from 1 to 10 mm thickness,
1000 to 1500 mm width, and several thousand meters

length. The tail of a coil is welded with the head of the

following coil in order to create a continuous process.

FIG. 2 SCHEMATIC GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE

FURNACE ZONES. () AND () ARE THE TEMPERATURE
IN THE UMPTHEENTH UPPER AND LOWER ZONE

Since the steel is treated in a continuous production

line, the quality of the final product depends greatly
on the operating conditions and the furnace
characteristic [Carvalho et al., 2006]. In fact, the
temperature in each furnace zone and the time the
material stays inside it are the critical parameters that
assure a good annealing. Time ranges from 0.5 to 5
minutes and temperature between 900 and 1100 .
These values are defined by the factory engineers for
each sheet thickness, width and steel grade.
Operational events and incidents during the production can affect the line speed or the temperature within
the furnace. This modification of the production
conditions could cause several areas of the sheet to be
poorly annealed. The general supervision of the steel
quality is normally done by performing metallurgical
tests of several samples taken along the coil.
Nevertheless, this procedure is highly costly and can
be inept at detecting badly annealed areas, due to the
number of samples required for each sheet and the
amount of coils produced per day.
Alternative procedures for detecting the quality of
steel in real-time can be found in literature [Michel et
al., 1979; Allison et al., 1992]; Mitra et al., 2003; Gfrerer
and Erlangen, 1983]. These industrial measurement
devices analyze residual magnetization that remains
in the steel, after the material is magnetized by an
external field. This residual magnetization, called
magnetic remanence, has been proposed as an
indicator of good annealing for ferritic steels as it
depends on the level of the re-crystallized structure
achieved during the annealing process. Nevertheless,
although this magnitude is quite significant, it can not
be used with non-ferromagnetic materials, like
austenitic steels. Austenitic steel is widely produced
stainless steels and exhibit superior corrosion
resistance and a greater added value than ferritic ones
[Charles, 2008].

Journal of Metallurgical Engineering (ME) Volume 3 Issue 1, January 2014

Temperature Space-Time Model

A graphical space-time model for the annealing
process is presented in this section. Temperatures
inside the furnace, the line speed, and the sheet
thickness and length are synthesized in order to
represent the process.
A typical annealing furnace consists of several zones
with its own burner and temperature sensors.
Therefore, the furnace can be considered as a set of
thermal generators that provide a homogeneous
temperature in each zone. In addition, since
temperature can vary independently in each zone over
time, furnace temperature can be represented by a
space surface that depends on time and location
inside of the furnace (, ) . FIG. 3 presents an
example of the temperature evolution in the furnace
zones. It can be seen that a decrease in temperature
took place in all zones around 18:20.

FIG. 3 GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION OF TEMPERATURE

EVOLUTION OVER TIME POSITION INSIDE OF THE
ANNEALING FURNACE

The main disadvantage of this representation is that it

does not point out the impact on the steel quality
when production conditions are modified, as well as
which sheet regions have been affected. This graphical
representation could be improved if the real line speed
and strip length are also taken into account in the
model.
Let us consider a coil as a set of finite elements of
length , characterized by their distance to the coil
head. As the instant a sheet head enters the furnace,
the line speed () and temperature in any furnace
zone at any time are known, it is possible to track each
coil element on its way inside the furnace. Besides, the
amount of heat received by each element can be
computed.
FIG. 4 shows the temperatures in each furnace zone
and the line speed versus time. It reveals that there has
been an anomaly in line speed at 18:16. As can be seen
in detail, this coil element has been heated in the first

www.me-journal.org

zone at more than 1225. Later, it has been exposed to

a temperature below 1175 in the third, fourth and
fifth zone, which could indicate a lack of annealing.

FIG. 4 ZONE TEMPERATURES EVOLUTION IN ANNEALING

FURNACE

These graphical representations help quality control

staff to supervise the annealing process for a specific
region of the sheet. However, they are interested in
supervising each sheet as a whole. Therefore, the
model should be enhanced to calculate a new value,
which should be representative of the annealing
process.
The processing of all production information and its
compact representation is not a trivial task. It must be
bear in mind that a coil could be thousands of meters
length, and tens of them are produced every day in
different production lines. In the next section, an
annealing model is proposed for summarizing all data
related to temperature, line speed, position in the coil,
etc., into a representative value.
Annealing Model
So far, a space-time model to describe the production
conditions during the annealing process has been
presented. In this section, two functions for
synthesizing all annealing information into a single
representative value are proposed.
The first formula computes the effective thermal
energy received by the steel sheet within the annealing
furnace:

1 () = 1 , ()

(1)

Where is a sheet element, and are the time

when enters and exits from the furnace respectively,
1 is the compensated temperature function (see FIG. 5
(a), and , () is temperature at time and position
() along the track of the element inside the furnace.
3

www.me-journal.org

Journal of Metallurgical Engineering (ME) Volume 3 Issue 1, January 2014

proportionally considered. The impact of heating the

steel with a temperature higher than could be
measured by the parameter .

The factory engineers set the line speed and furnace

temperature for each coil according to the steel grade
and sheet thickness, therefore fixing the time the sheet
has to be inside of the furnace at the annealing
temperature. For this reason, the second formula is
more suitable and easy to interpret by production
engineers. A comparison of both formulas can be
found in [Spinola et al., 2008]. From this point to the
end of this study, only equation (2) is considered and
is referred to as the annealing model.

FIG. 5 ANNEALING FUNCTIONS: (a) THE COMPENSATED

TEMPERATURE AND (b) THE COMPENSATED ANNEALING
TIME

Let be the annealing temperature set. Function 1 ()

is 0 when < , since at this temperature the steel is
heated, but the grain structure is not recrystallized. On
the contrary, when function 1 is equal to T,
depicting a slope = 1 , as annealing takes place above
this specific temperature.

In (1), the physical dimension is temperature by time

( ), and it is related with the amount of effective
thermal energy, devoted to annealing, received by the
coil element . One disadvantage of equation (1) is
that it depends greatly on the critical value . But
such a key value is not so precise and temperatures
just below also affect the metal internal structure to
a certain extent. Nevertheless, the main reason is that
the physical dimension of equation (1), , is not a
measurement that can be easily interpreted by
production engineers, which rely more on furnace
temperature and the time the material has to be inside
it. For these reasons, an alternative formula was
proposed:

2 () = 2 , ()

(2)

Where 2 is the compensated annealing time function

(see FIG. 5 (b)). The defined interval for 2 , [ , ]
contains the critical value and parameter should
be zero or slightly above. Function 2 has a different
physical meaning. It represents the compensated time
an element is within the furnace at temperature .
The time the element is exposed to a temperature
below is not considered at all, but the time the coil
is heated with a temperature from to is
4

Once the annealing model is computed for every

element of a coil, a representative set of values of the
coil annealing is obtained. According to this
information, bad annealing areas can be easily
detected. In the next section, the annealing model is
validated with respect to the magnetic remanence.
Validating of Annealing Model
In this section, the annealing model is put to work and
its results compared with the magnetic remanence in
two real production cases.
FIG. 6 shows a real ferritic steel sheet processed in one
of the factory annealing lines.

FIG. 6 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN 2 AND MAGNETIC

REMANENCE. PARAMETERS USED = 966, = 870 , = 0

This sheet is 1300 meters length. The figure is divided

into two graphs: in the upper graph the production
conditions are represented, i.e. average temperature
and line speed for every sheet element. In the lower
graph, the magnetic remanence, the ideal annealing
time for that coil (Norm) and the values given by the
annealing model (2 ) are presented.
The annealing model has been computed with an

Journal of Metallurgical Engineering (ME) Volume 3 Issue 1, January 2014

element length () equal to 50 meters and a parameter

m equal to zero. At the moment, parameters , and
have been set empirically and saved in look-up
tables by the factory engineers depending on sheet
thickness and steel grade. As can be seen in FIG. 6 the
average speed of sheet elements between 500 and 750
meters suffered an average speed reduction while they
were inside the furnace. In addition, the average
temperature that they were exposed to was
significantly increased due to this production incident.
The 2 function shows an excess of annealing
located at meter 560th that could have affected the
metallic structure of the steel. This is corroborated by
the increasing measurements of magnetic remanence
in this zone. Both the annealing excess and defect are
manifested graphically as an increase above normal
magnetic remanence values [Allison et al., 1992;
Michel et al., 1979].
2 values in FIG. 6 are directly related to the desired
annealing time (20 seconds) and very easy to interpret
by production engineers. Some tolerance around the
ideal value can be established, which will be
determined by laboratory metallurgical tests.
Quality inspectors can detect defects with this
representation and analyze them to confirm which
regions have not been well annealed.

www.me-journal.org

thermocouples used by the control system of the

furnace are utilized. Although the most important
result is that this function is directly valid for
austenitic as well as ferritic steels, wich can be seen in
FIG. 7.
This annealing anomaly was also verified and
reported by the on-line quality control staff and the
zone was marked as scrap quality along 130 meters. In
this case, only 2 function is represented, because
there is not any magnetic remanence data. In fact,
2 function represents the deviation from the
annealing parameters (time and temperature) set by
the quality control engineers.
The installation of this model in the factory has
provided satisfactory results because it allows the
inspection of the annealing process in a very efficient
way. Furthermore, it would also allow the line
operators to modify the production conditions
according to the real data it can generate.
Nevertheless, although flaws can be seen in graphical
representation, the model does not automatically
detect them as it does not assign a quality value for
neither each element nor the entire coil. Additional
work needs to be carry out in this field, and a
supervised neural network is proposed for future
investigations.
The negative effect of furnace temperatures above
certain limits should also be included in the annealing
equations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors wish to thank Acerinox Co. management

for supporting this investigation and the Information
Systems and Quality Control departments for the
suggestions offered during this research.
REFERENCES
FIG. 7 ANNEALING ANOMALY FOR AUSTENITIC STAINLESS
STEEL

Results and Conclusions

In this paper, a supervisory model of the annealing
process has been presented. This system allows quality
control staff to easily supervise a very complex
production process since it summarizes all the
generated information into a set of representative
values along the coil length. Another advantage is that
additional sensors are not required, as the existing

Allison, S. G., Namkung, M., Yost, W. T., Cantrell, J. H.

Magnetic remanence method and apparatus to test
materials for embrittlement. US Patent 5117184, 1992.
Bailey, J. E., Hirsch, P. B. The recrystallization process in
some poly-crystalline metals. Proceedings of the Royal
Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical
Sciences 267 (1962): 1130.
Carvalho, S. R., Ong, T. H., Guimaraes, G. A mathematical
and com-putational model of furnaces for continuous
steel strip processing. Materials Processing Technology

www.me-journal.org

Journal of Metallurgical Engineering (ME) Volume 3 Issue 1, January 2014

178 (2006): 379387.

Charles, J. Duplex stainless steels, a review after DSS07 in
grado. Revue de Metallurgie 3 (2008): 155171.

for the non-destructive evaluation of steel structures or

components. US Patent 6617847, 2003.
Quach, W. M., Teng, J. G., Chung, K. F. Residual stresses in

Erdem, G., Taptik, Y. Effect of hot rolling conditions to

press-braked stainless steel sections, i: Coiling and

produce deep drawing quality steels for continuous

uncoiling of sheets. Constructional Steel Research 65

annealing process. Journal of Materials Processing

(2009): 18031815.

Technology 170 (2005): 1723.

Spinola, C., Galvez-Fernandez, C., Martin-Vazquez, J.,

Gfrerer, M., Erlangen, F. Method and device for the

Martin-Tapia, F., Bonelo, J., Vizoso, J., Munoz-Perez, J.

continuous, contact-less monitoring of the structure state

Supervision model for the annealing process in a

of cold strip. US Patent 4394193, 1983.

stainless steel production line. IEEE International

Li, S., Chen, Q., Huang, G.-B. Dynamic temperature

modeling of contin-uous anneling furnace using GGAPRBF neural network. Neurocomputing 69 (2006): 523
536.

Conference on Industrial Technology, Chengu, China.

April 21-24, 2008.
Tian, Y.-C., Levy, D. C., Gu, T. Implemeting a process
model

for

real-time

applications.

Conference

on

Michel, W., Essen, Mulders, H. Continuous control of the

Complex System, Cairns, Australia. December 6-10, 2004.

microstruc-tural condition during continuous annealing

Yoshitani, N., Hasegawa, A. Model-based control of strip

of stainless magnetizable cold-rolled strip by measuring

temperature for the heating furnace in continuous

the remanence. Stahl und Eisen 14 (1979).

annealing.

Mitra, A., Sagar, S. P., Bhattacharya, D. K. Sensitive device

IEEE

Transaction

Technology. November 15-19, 1998.

Control

Systems