Analyzing Infrared Linescan Profiles of Steel Strips for Enhanced Cooling Pattern Prediction

Real-time temperature information is crucial for optimizing cooling processes during steel strip rolling, ensuring the attainment of desired microstructural properties and surface quality at an optimal cooling rate. Infrared line scanners emerge as the preferred choice for temperature measurement in highspeed rolling operations, delivering temperature readings with high resolution and enabling the capture of detailed temperature profiles. By analyzing these profiles, cooling systems can be finely adjusted and precisely controlled to optimize the rolling operation. However, developing effective cooling strategies becomes challenging when dealing with temperature profiles comprising numerous discrete data points, often numbering in the thousands per profile. This study presents an innovative approach that integrates the detection of steel strip boundaries within temperature profiles and subsequent temperature pattern characterization using polynomial fitting. A significant advantage is demonstrated by leveraging the coefficients of Legendre polynomials, which provide a concise description of temperature profile shapes, facilitating straightforward approaches to cooling strategies. By integrating boundary detection with temperature characterization, the system enhances its ability to predict tailored cooling patterns, optimizing cooling efficiency, and enhancing product quality in the manufacturing process. Rigorous testing using both synthetic data and real-world applications in cold and hot rolling validates the proposed system's practical utility and reliability. These results underscore its potential to enhance efficiency and quality in industrial steel manufacturing operations.1