The modeling and identification of walking beam type slab reheating furnace based on immersion and invariance disturbance estimation

This paper presents the modeling and identification of a walking-beam-type slab reheating furnace in one of the biggest Iron and Steel Industry in Turkey. Firstly, the dynamical model of the furnace is established as it is running with 12 control zones based on energy balance equations in the zones. Secondly, a disturbance observer is designed to estimate the disturbances that represents unmeasurable energy losses and the effects of unknown dynamics of the system based on Immersion and Invariance (I&I) approach. Then, model is identified with real data collected from the running furnace. The model and real furnace outputs are compared zone by zone. The results demonstrate the validity of the model.