The Reheating Furnace Control System Design Based On SIEMENS
PCS7
1
Pei Zhou, 2Wei He, 2Zhanglong Zhang
1. Chongqing Techology and Business University, Chongqing, 400067, China( zhoupei@ctbu.edu.cn)
2. State Key Laboratory of Power Transmission Equipment & System Security and New
TechnologyChongqing University,Chongqing,China
Abstract—This paper introduces that the method of
using Siemens process control system PCS7 V6.0 to control the
reheating furnace. It describes the configuration of both
software and hardware of control system, function
accomplished by the system and the difficulties along with
solution. The reheating furnace control system is configurated
with double CPU redundancy. It adopts industrial Ethernet ,
Europe popular PROFIBUS DP field bus and distributed I/O
ET200M structure. It adopts ET200M I/O station redundancy
communication interface and node with PROFIBUS DP
protocol to communicate with double controller(CPU).
I INTRODUCTION
INonthetheproduction process of hot mill strip, the requirement
temperature of incoming slab billet is relatively
high; generally speaking, it shall be 1 350℃ or so. The
reheating furnace, as the equipment for reheating procedure,
can meet the requirements on continuous reliable
production only when the control over the temperature and
the output quantity are well coordinated. The reheating
furnace adopts moveable walking beam to move the cold
slab billet to the exit side from the furnace enter side; when
the slab billet is moving, it will be heated by the
combination gas of burner nozzle injection furnace and
coke furnace. When the slab billet enters the furnace from
the tail end of the furnace body, firstly it will be heated to
850℃ or so in the preheating section and then to about 1
300℃ in the reheating section; finally it will enter the heat
soak section to make the slab billet be heated evenly for
rolling.
The above-mentioned control process is commonly
accomplished by DCS (digital control system) of the
instruments and the routine control strategy is to realize it
through continuous PID (proportion, integral and
differential). Several thermocouples are arranged
respectively on the top or side wall of each control section
to respectively gather the actual temperature in each section
of the furnace and then the sampling values will be sent to
PLC (programmable logic controller) so as to realize the
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continuous proportion, integral and differential control (PID
control) via the difference between the measured values and
the set value of gas and air flow; then the opening degree of
the burner gun in each section will be adjusted to control
the flow of gas so as to control the temperature, however,
since it is not clear about the combustion of the gas, if this
method is adopted, the utilization efficiency of heat
medium is very low and the energy consumption is very
large. Here one kind of improved dual-crossing amplitude
limiting full-auto combustion control will be introduced and
its basic principle is to carry out the control over
combustion at the upper part and lower part of each section
in normal working time; if necessary, the temperature
adjustment signal of the upper part can be regarded as the
set control of the dual-crossing amplitude limiting loop and
the former temperature detection value of the lower part can
be used for monitoring the furnace condition. This principal
and subordinate control mode can better coordinate the
balance of combustion and heat supply between the upper
section and lower section to make the combustion of the
upper and lower section even; at the same time, it considers
the combustion of gas, playing a good role in
energy-saving.
In this project, PCS7 V6.0 developed by Siemens will
be used to realize the above-mentioned control function.
II BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO PCS7 SYSTEM
PCS7 is an advanced process control system orientated
to all process control applications based on S5, S6 and S7
series programmable logic controller and TELEPERM
series cyborg system by Siemens combining with the most
advanced computer software and hardware technology,
which adopts replaceable operation station, strong relational
distributed database support platform, highly-reliable
process control station with large capacity redundancy and
distributed I/O control sub-system of PROFIBUS process
field bus technology.
PCS7 has been applied in more and more industry
control areas as a kind of procedure-oriented software
development platform. It has advanced a sort of
completely-integrated automatic solution and can provide
all kinds of automation applications with a uniform
technical circumstance. The following items are included in
it: unified data management, communication, configuration
and programming software. Based on the circumstance
above, all kinds of technologies can be integrated in a
overall system with a global database on the same interface
with users. Engineers or technicians can configurate and
program in the same platform for all kinds of applications.
The complicated engineering becomes simpler by using a
configuration platform. The PCS7 makes the PLC
incorporated in the DCS system more easily, embodying the
genuine characteristics of the computerized automatic
control.
III BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO CONTROL SYSTEM
OF REHEATING FURNACE
In the complex industrial process system，we always
meet such problems :multiple constraint conditions: multi
variable system: strong coupling; nonlinear system: large
time delay; multi control target; and so on. Custom control
technique can not solve above problems. But advanced
control technique can deal well with those problems. How
to use advanced control technique in industrial process and
generate practical utility is a urgent problem in the
industrial automate research realm. According as the
galloping of computer technique，hardware technique，
network technique，industrialization of advanced control
technique is realizable.
This article put forward the useful and
easily-realizable and reliable control way to realize the
automatic control system of walking reheating furnace，on
the basis of including the theory of process control，
technology of DCS and PLC，communication，field bus，
and in term of the characteristic of the walking reheating
furnace, also by using the electrical and instrument control
equipment with the practical and reliable technology and
advanced quota.
We can realize the instrument control system and
electric control system by using DCS and PLC. The control
system of reheating furnace is divided into furnace area
PLC control system，roll PLC control system and reheating
furnace DCS control system. The controller of instrument
and electric connect to the server of the operater station by
the IEEE Ethernet，by using DCS and PLC，the technology
of network and field bus technology to combine the process
control system and process computer ， intelligent
instruments，drive system to realize the instrument and
electric control in one system.
IV COMPOSITION OF CONTROL SYSTEM OF
REHEATING FURNACE
A. Configuration Of Control System
In this article，based on walking reheating furnace
controlling process ， control system is a complicated
transmit heat and character process，has many peculiarity
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such as disturb，strong coupling，great pure lag etc. we
discuss the design of dedicated control equipment of basis
walking reheating furnace in detai1 including
characteristic，correlative soft and hardware information
and realization of control.
PID control is are comprehensive controlling rule in
meter controlling system，because of its mature, familiarity
in technician and operator, well effect，broad appliance in
computer DDC data controlling equipment and especially
complicated controlling system，practice proved it adapt
various industrial controlling process.
The key equipment of the reheating furnace: loader
machine，unloader machine，walking system，series transfer
roll，control system of burning and tracking of slab. The
whole control system of the reheating furnace is
configurated with double CPU redundancy, redundancy ring
industrial Ethernet, PROFIBUS DP bus and distributed I/O
ET200M structure, with the detailed configuration shown in
Fig 1. Make use of the system，we can carry out the
function of transferring measuring and weighting ，
detecting，loading and unloading tracking the slab，we can
control process of burning and exchange data each other to
track slab and manage the process over all of product line.
Goals of reheating furnace’s producing process such as high
yield，low consuming and pollution，automatic operating
mode are achieved.
A.1 Hardware configuration
Shown as Fig. 1, the whole DCS control system of the
reheating furnace has two remarkable characteristics: the
first one is that the basic automation level adopts
redundancy ring structure so as to improve the reliability
and stability of the system; the second one is that the
information level adopts standard Ethernet structure to
make the whole system large capacity data communication
ability and convenient extensibility. Aiming at the
above-mentioned characteristics the following modes will
be adopted to select the hardware:
(1)Selecting the process controller CPU414-H in
S7-400 series made by Siemens as the core of the whole
control system of the reheating furnace to jointly form the
redundancy system control station together with distributed
I/O ET200M;
(2)The monitoring system adopts YANHUA industrial
control computer and Philip 22” pure-flat color display as
the engineer station and operator station. The operation
stations of the system are working in form of online and
coordination and they are full-transparent and full
fault-tolerant, realizing the replacement with each other.
This mode makes this system advantageous in reliable
operation, reasonable data distribution, quick operation
speed, friendly man-machine interface and convenient use
and so on.
(3)The three-level network system structure composing
of standard Ethernet (IEEE Ethernet 802.X), SIEMENS
SIMATIC NET industrial Ethernet network and PROFIBUS
process field bus (EN50170) guarantees the high reliability,
no blockage and high speed (10M~100M) of the data
communication of the system, especially, it adopts
double-ring fault-tolerant optical fiber network, more
effectively guarantee the field anti-interference ability and
high reliability of the data transmission of the network
system.
the system. In addition, this system also establishes the loop
display picture and the centralized control over each loop
can be realized in the loop picture. Click the detailed
information including set value, process value, output value,
manual and auto switch and upper and lower limit alarm of
the process variables on the PID control panel. The analog
quantity displays value and flow accumulation of the analog
quantity in form of centralization. The thermometer
displays the main temperature parameters of the system.
Functions of control system is explained according to
program flow of loading automatic running. Fig.2

A.2 Software configuration

It adopts Microsoft WINDOWS2000 (English) as the

operating system software and PCS7 TOOL SET V6.3
made by Siemens will be configurated on engineer station
as the software to control the lower-position computer and
monitor the upper-position computer. In addition, it is
provided with Industry Ethernet S7-REDCONNECT
communication software and redundancy H system
software.
The operator station is provided with upper-position
computer monitoring software PCS7WinCC, which is
cooperatively developed by Siemens and Microsoft.
Besides the functions that can be realized by the common
monitoring software, PCS7WinCC can be added with
various controls and C script program, VB program to
accomplish more complicated functions.
B. Functions accomplished by control system
In order to make the operators master the operation
condition of the whole control system of the computer in
time, accurately control the stable operation of the system
and convenient in operation, this system establishes system
process flow assembly drawing, steam drum process flow
chart, process flow chart of reheating section and the one of
heat section.
The process flow chart is the process flow display C. Difficulties and realization
picture with industrial control parameters, vividly reflecting The fuel for the reheating furnace is the mixed gas of
the production process state of this system and providing blast furnace and coke oven, with unstable heat value,
the display of the measured values of the detection points of resulting in difficulty in control over the temperature. In this
project, the control method of reheating the furnace

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temperature and coal gas flow as well as the air flow
cascade dual-crossing amplitude limiting is adopted to
stabilize the control set value within ±10℃.
The detailed idea is as follows: taking the temperature
of the reheating furnace as the main loop, the coal gas flow
and air flow as the auxiliary loop, the output of the
temperature loop of the reheating furnace will be
transformed into the initial set value of the coal gas flow
and air flow. The control over the coal gas flow will be
subject to high and low selection according to the air flow
and will be subject to the amplitude limiting according to
the higher and lower limit of the coal gas flow so as to
determine the final set value of the coal gas flow loop. The
control over air flow will be subject to the high and low
selection according to the coal gas flow and will be subject
to the amplitude limiting according to the higher and lower
limit of the air flow so as to determine the final set value of
the air flow loop. 。
The control principle of the temperature of reheating
furnace, coal gas flow and air flow cascade dual-crossing
amplitude limiting is shown in Fig. 3:
Where, μ is the air surplus coefficient, β is the
complementary coefficient of the flow measurement range,
the ratio of air to gas=μ×β and K1, K2, K3 and K4 are the
difference coefficient.
V EXPERIENCE IN APPLICATION
Nowadays there existing high-speed developments in
science and technology, to enhance automation level and
reduce laboring intensity of the workers, the applications of
computers and the process controls and monitors to some
huge and complex industrial systems with process control
software have come to an inexorable tendency.
During the process of programming, the strong
function of control flow chart of PCS7 (CFC) enables the
programmers be convenient and rapid. The only shortage is
that there are too many options of the module parameters, in
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case that one just right PID block that can satisfy the need
of control can be developed, the programming will be more
convenient and perfect.
HORN function of WinCC makes the voice alarm
configuration easier and quicker. It is only necessary to
record the *.wav file of voice for alarm and connect the
voice alarm and alarm event in HORN function.
The combination of the WinCC and STEP7 shares
some duties of the upper-position machine to monitor and
collect data on the spot reasonably, exerts respective
advantages of different facilities, and is supposed to be a
characteristic and promising design of the computerized
control system.
In the process of system commissioning and being put
into operation, the diagnostic functions of the hardware of
PCS7 are strong and they can help the onsite commissioning
engineer settle the problems quickly.
The contents of information of PID panel are all-round.
In the process of setting PID parameters, it can observe the
change in PV value and OP value and the onsite operator
can operate the related parameters of the loop conveniently,
saving the a large quantity of time of the developers.
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