Active compensation of roll eccentricity in rolling mills

This paper is concerned with the active compensation of the roll-eccentricity-induced periodic disturbances in the strip exit thickness of hot and cold rolling mills. The roll eccentricity may be caused by different reasons, e.g., inexact roll grinding or nonuniform thermal expansion of the rolls. The increasing demands on the thickness tolerances require new methods for the active compensation of the contribution of the roll eccentricity to the final thickness deviation. The presented method is based on the factorization approach over the set of stable transfer functions in combination with an adaptive least-mean-squares algorithm derived from the projection theorem. Here, we take advantage of the fact that the eccentricity-caused disturbance is periodic with a frequency proportional to the measured angular velocity of the rolls. Furthermore, it turns out that the presented concept fits the conventional control circuit of automatic gauge control in an optimal way. Simulation results for a cold rolling mill and measurement results for a hot strip mill demonstrate the feasibility and the excellent performance of the design.