Thermophysical Properties Estimation in Annealing Process Using the Iterative Dynamic Programming Method and Gradient Method

Abstract

In annealing, steel coils should be heated and consequently cooled according to the technological prescription defined for the annealed type of steel. It is appropriate to develop the systems and methods for estimation of the steel coil inner temperature for that reason. The proposal for such a system of indirect measurement of inner temperature is described in this study. This system, in the form of the mathematical model, is developed based on the theory of heat transfer and needs thermophysical parameters as inputs. In many cases, the thermophysical properties are difficult to access or unknown for the specific composition of the material being processed. In this paper, two optimization methods were applied to estimate two thermophysical properties. The application of the iterative dynamic programming method is aimed to estimate optimal thermal diffusivity. The verification of this method was performed on 11 laboratory measurements. The algorithm of the gradient method was used for estimating thermal conductivity and was verified on seven operational measurements. Results show that the optimized values of thermophysical properties increased the accuracy of the steel coil inner temperature estimation in the locations nearer to the steal coil central axis.