Steering Control of Metal Strips Using a Pivoted Guide Roller

Controlling the lateral position of moving metal strips is a frequent task in the metal industry. For production lines with a guide roller at the entry, a dynamical model is developed and validated by measurements from an industrial plant. A reduced-order state observer is designed to estimate unmeasurable states. As the system is open-loop unstable, output-feedback controllers, state-feedback controllers, and a constrained model predictive controller are developed. Their performance is compared in a simulated example problem.