SASS applied to optimum work roll profile selection in the hot rolling of wide steel

The quality of steel strip produced in a wide strip rolling mill depends heavily on the careful selection of initial ground work roll profiles for each of the mill stands in the finishing train. In the past, these profiles were determined by human experts, based on their knowledge and experience. In this research, a Self-Organising Migration Algorithm (SOMA), a heuristic optimisation algorithm, has been used to find optimum profiles for a simulated rolling mill. The resulting strip quality produced using the profiles found by the optimisation algorithm and the quality produced using the original specifications are compared. The best set of profiles found by SOMA clearly outperformed the original set.