CIVS is Developing a Digital Twin for CESMII and ArcelorMittal’s Zero Defect Slab Casting

CIVS is part of a group collaborating on an ArcelorMittal and CESMII-hosted project titled “Production of Zero-defect (ZD) Slabs through the Implementation of Smart Manufacturing Technologies in Steel Continuous Casting”.  The team is led by ArcelorMittal in partner with Missouri University of Science & Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Purdue University Northwest. The project is to use big-data analytics, IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR), and digital twin to put together a system, which will help incorporate both historical and live data to provide both insight to relationships between data that was otherwise split up among many different software packages.  The system will allow this data to provide predictions to help inform operator decisions on the floor, and improve product quality.

The work scope for CIVS is mainly to develop and deploy Digital Twin of pilot caster both online and offline, which can track casting parameters relevant to slab quality as well as track equipment and sensor parameters relevant to machine condition.  In August 2020, CIVS staff and students began work on creating a 3D, interactive software that will allow users to process, visualize, and compare data collected from sensors and models in a singular interface, effectively creating a ‘Digital Twin’ of the casting process. The Digital Twin is developed specifically for a caster in ArcelorMittal.  The impact of the overall project could make may help many other companies like ArcelorMittal as they move towards digital transformations in their own workplaces.

A digital twin is a virtual model of a real product, process or service that can monitor, analyze and improve its performance.  See more details in ArcelorMIttal’s news release.