Control of continuous steel billet induction heater as distributed parameter system

Abstract

Industrial induction heating represents the environmentally clean, contactless method of steel heating. Same time it has high energy consumption, so in recent years, more efficient modular topology of heaters were introduced. Due to its multiple power modules, there is a possibility to apply the distributed parameter system control theory. By the usage of COMSOL Multiphysics solution, the model in the form of lumped-input and distributed-parameter-output system has been built. The process control is performed on the relations between the coil currents fed into four separate modules of heating device and desired billet temperature profile.