Looper-Tension Sliding Mode Control for Hot Strip Finishing Mills

An innovative sliding mode controller for looper and tension control in hot strip finishing mills was developed based on approximately linearized model. Firstly, a fictitious controller of the reduced order subsystem was designed according to desired dynamics, by which, the angle and tension loops were decoupled on the sliding manifold. Then, a sliding mode controller was used to validate finite time convergence of the state vector to the manifold which guaranteed the stability and performances of the overall system. This solution was considered owing to its well-known robustness and simplicity characteristics concerning disturbances and unmodelled dynamics. Simulation results showed the effectiveness of the proposed controller compared with conventional ones.