Reduced-order observer-based robust synchronisation control of cold rolling mills with measurement delay

To improve the quality of strip thickness, synchronisation control is investigated for cold rolling mills driven by dual-cylinder electro-hydraulic servo systems. Realising synchronised control in hydraulic automatic gauge control (HAGC) systems of cold rolling mills has challenges with not only the inherent nonlinearities of hydraulic servo systems and uncertainties of load variation but also measurement delay of strip thickness. Since all states are not measurable in practice, output feedback robust synchronisation control problem should be addressed for uncertain nonlinear systems with output delay. Thus, a reduced-order observer-based robust synchronous controller is presented by employing Lyapunov functional stability theory. The controller designed by incorporating the integral of the position synchronisation error of two pistons into state variables successfully guarantees asymptotic convergence to zero of both tracking errors and synchronisation error simultaneously regardless of the nonlinearities and uncertainties as well as the measurement delay. Simulation results in a model obtained from a real cold strip rolling mill demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.