Nucor Corporation

Ivan David Parkes

Walter N Blejde

Neera Jain Sundaram

Jianqi Ruan

Robert Nooning, Jr

George T C Chiu

George Tc Chiu

A twin roll casting system comprises a pair of counter-rotating casting rolls having a nip between the casting rolls and capable of delivering cast strip downwardly from the nip; a casting roll controller configured to adjust at least one process control setpoint between the casting rolls in response to control signals; a cast strip sensor capable of measuring at least one parameter of the cast strip; and a controller coupled to the cast strip sensor to receive cast strip measurement signals from the cast strip sensor and coupled to the casting roll controller to provide control signals to the casting roll controller. The controller comprises a reinforcement learning (RL) Agent, the RL Agent generating control signals for the casting roll controller in response to a reward function having a first term rewarding emulating human operation of the process control setpoint and a second term rewarding a short set-up time.

Application of a learning agent to achieve autonomous operation of a twin roll casting machine

A twin roll casting system includes a pair of counter-rotating casting rolls, a casting roll controller is configured to receive a plant input comprising at least one process control setpoint for the casting rolls. A cast strip sensor measures at least one parameter of the cast strip. A feedback controller receives measurement signals from the cast strip sensor. The feedback controller is a data-driven model including a database of state-input pairs; and executes the following steps at each time step: measure a state-input similarity between a new state observation and samples, assign a weight to each consequent output of samples based on the measured state input similarity, and sum the weighted outputs and predict an output of a new state observation. The feedback controller is configured to provide the control setpoint to the casting roll controller based on the predicted output of the new state observation.

Training-free data-driven method for input-output modeling of complex process

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Madison, AL, United States of America

Ivan David Parkes