A Classic Controller Design for a Billet's Unloading Machine Using the IMC Approach

Classic controllers are widely used in the hot rolling process in order to obtain seamless tube pipes. This process relies on heating up the billets inside a rotary hearth furnace (RHF). For the design of a classic positioning control system, of an unloading machine's arm that extracts the billets from the RHF, the authors used the Internal Model Control (IMC) method. The parameters used for tuning the controllers are the IMC method filter's time constant and the filter order. The obtained controllers are compared in terms of overall performance and the one that generates the most suitable performance set is chosen. Validation of the results is made via simulation.