The most common and well proven control strategy for thickness control in industrial rolling mills is the automatic gauge controller (AGC). However, it is still unclear how to use AGC for the control of asymmetries in lateral direction. How should the controller react to different thickness estimations at both sides of the mill. Such laterally asymmetric rolling conditions may originate from strip track-off, asymmetric friction in the mill stand, or a wedge-shaped entry profile of the strip thickness. In this paper, two different versions of AGC are compared and a feedforward approach is developed for lateral asymmetries of the entry thickness profile. Simulation studies based on a validated mill stand model demonstrate the benefit of combining AGC with a feedforward controller to compensate for asymmetries.
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