Modeling and predictive control of a reheating furnace

Reheating furnaces in iron and steel industry are main facilities of hot charge rolling processes. The main objective of such a reheating furnace is to control billet temperature uniformly, thereby resulting in successful rolling process performance and high productivity. In this paper, a dynamic model of the reheating furnace is derived using material and energy balances. A multivariable controller design procedure is then presented on the basis of a system identification technique and a predictive control algorithm. Simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.