Prediction Model of Iron Ore Pellet Ambient Strength and Sensitivity Analysis on the Influence Factors

Abstract

The Ambient Compressive Strength (CS) of pellets, influenced by several factors, is regarded as a criterion to assess pellets during metallurgical processes. A prediction model based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was proposed in order to provide a reliable and economic control strategy for CS in pellet production and to forecast and control pellet CS. The dimensionality of 19 influence factors of CS was considered and reduced by Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The PCA variables were then used as the input variables for the Back Propagation (BP) neural network, which was upgraded by Genetic Algorithm (GA), with CS as the output variable. After training and testing with production data, the PCA-GA-BP neural network was established. Additionally, the sensitivity analysis of input variables was calculated to obtain a detailed influence on pellet CS. It has been found that prediction accuracy of the PCA-GA-BP network mentioned here is 96.4%, indicating that the ANN network is effective to predict CS in the pelletizing process.