Application of nonlinear model predictive control to an industrial induction heating furnace

Induction Heating Furnaces are used extensively in industry. The basic principle is that induced eddy currents are used to heat a ferromagnetic material as it passes through a series of coils. Because of the importance of such systems, there has been on-going interest in their design and operation. Past work includes model development from physical principles and optimal design of operational practices. However, previous work has invariably been based on open-loop strategies. Our work is aimed at the design of a closed-loop control strategy incorporating feedback from the available measurements. This paper reports initial work including model development and calibration together with preliminary control system design. Proposed future work includes full scale industrial implementation.