The research effort supported by this award is aimed at providing operational flexibility of controlled systems with moving boundaries, such as those involving melting and/or solidification, to meet changing production demands. The objective, referred to as motion planning, is a timely generation of commands to the closed loop, the latter being composed of a process coupled to a model-based feedback control law, to guarantee process motions that provide optimal product quality. Focusing on continuous steel casting, the research approach is to start from the improvement of process model and clear delineation of static and dynamic constraints on its behavior and progress to creation of motion planning algorithms that satisfy the constraints. Deliverables include fundamental control-theoretic results, fast optimal motion planning tools for moving boundary systems, software/hardware demonstration and validation on an industrial caster at Nucor Steel, documentation of research results in publications, and engineering student education.
If successful, the results of this research will offer widely applicable motion planning tools that rigorously optimize operation of moving boundary processes, providing significant economic and environmental impacts. Example applications include crystal growth, solid and liquid burning, and multiple forms of melting and solidification. For example, a one percent reduction in yield loss in continuous steel casting would save about $150 million per year, while optimizing cooling conditions to conserve just 10% more of the cast steel internal energy would produce $350 million per year savings during reheating. Student researchers will master and broadly disseminate expertise and commercialize the results. The research and educational infrastructure will be significantly enhanced through student involvement, international collaboration, and broad dissemination of knowledge.
