Molten Steel Level Control Based on an Adaptive Fuzzy Estimator in a Continuous Caster

In this paper, we propose a molten steel level controller for a continuous caster that is based on an adaptive fuzzy estimator. The main objective of the proposed controller is to reject the bulging disturbance that occurs in the continuous casting process. If we know the bulging frequencies and phases, and the system time delay, then we can efficiently reject the bulging disturbance by using an adaptive fuzzy estimator. It generates the estimated bulging compensation signal taking the system nonlinearities and delay into account and this signal is added with the PID output to reject the real bulging disturbance efficiently. Computer simulations and experiments were executed with one-to-four-scale H/W simulator.