A FPGA implementation of a real-time inspection system for steel roll imperfections

Abstract

Today’s production processes are more and more optimized to be competitive. The production demands are increased for speed and quality. These increased demands do not pass the roll shops in the steel industry. In the roll shop periodically the rolls from the rolling mill are checked for imperfections. The imperfections are detected by special inspection systems. Improving the inspection systems can speed up the overall process significantly in the roll shop. The request for an improved inspection system results in a new generation inspection system. This inspection system should measure more signals at the same time and process the signals faster. To achieve this result the measurements are digitalized and processed in parallel on a FPGA. Speed and quality demands are also asked from the engineers by designing and maintanance of the inspection system. In this thesis a High-Level Synthesis tool is selected to implement the mathematical model of the inspection system. The tool selection is done based on a comparison between three HLS tools, namely: CatapultC, ROCCC and Compaan. For this implementation Compaan is the most promising one. Compaan is able to split the data streams processing in concurrent systems with distributed memories. With Compaan as development tool the main part of the mathematical model is implemented in four months. This is four times faster than the preceding implementation.Circuits and SystemsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc