Digital-Twin-Based Coordinated Optimal Control for Steel Continuous Casting Process

A digital-twin-model-based optimal control system is presented for the steel continuous casting process. The system is designed for the coordinated optimization and dynamic control of secondary cooling and final electromagnetic stirring (FEMS), and involves three related parts. Firstly, a three dimensional real-time heat transfer model is established as the digital twin of the heat transfer process of continuous casting; for high accuracy, it is calibrated offline and calibrated online using measurements of the surface temperatures and shell thicknesses (only offline). Secondly, according to metallurgical rules, cooling and stirring are optimized coordinatively, based on the established digital-twin model and chaos particle swarm optimization algorithm. Thirdly, cooling and stirring are further dynamically controlled for quality stability. Finally, the system is applied in a bloom caster with model errors <= +/- 10 degrees C and control errors <= +/- 4 degrees C, which reduces the macro-segregation over grade 1.5 from 11% to 3.3%.