Updating of process control system for radial double-strand steel continuous casting plant No.5.
Updating involved change-over to equipment and software of S7-1500 series with distributed input/output stations ET200SP.
The existent data level was complemented with the following components:
- two high-end virtualization servers with relevant software;
- operator workstations;
- visualization server with 100 % hot backup and WinCC v7.5 software;
- engineering station for system maintenance;
- diagnosis and data collection system server iba PDA with relevant software;
WinCC visualization system clients were executed by way of virtual machines operating in VMWare vSphere environment.
The following process control functions were implemented:
1. Information functions:
- tundish liquid metal temperature control;
- control of argon flow for metal antioxygenation;
- monitoring of heat takeoff from mold walls (separately for each wall);
- monitoring of temperature conditions in secondary cooling zone;
- monitoring of cooling of rolls and central supports;
- tracking of ingot passing;
- control and calculation of ingot cutting process;
- monitoring of performance of electrical equipment, lubricating, hydraulic systems and mechanical equipment;
- control of abnormal deviations of parameters and tripping events;
- data display on control stations, workstations and indicator panels of casting platform;
- data exchange with related systems;
- parameter backup.
2. Control functions:
- control of mold walls separate cooling process;
- control of temperature conditions of secondary cooling zones;
- control of cooling of equipment of steel continuous casting plant;
- control of ingot cutting process and operation of torch cutting machine as part of «Ingot» subsystem;
- control of slab marking process.
3. Quality forecasting system functions:
- metal quality assessment according to preset parameters during pouring process till cutting. Enables operator to cut out the defective areas according to information obtained from the system, thus enhancing the product yield;
- equipment wear monitoring according to the established lifetime. Outage scheduling;
- manual and automated production planning.