Verification of internal coil transport and storage proposal (utilising AGV on a circular route and cranes) in newly designed steel production facility.

Description:

Facing the challenges of increasing demand for steel products, voestalpine steel producer decided to rise its production volumes and invest more than 5 mld. Euro to build a brand new steel production facility on the Black Sea cost (the project is codenamed Edelweiss). The facility, which actual location is still unknown, should be able to produce 5 mil. tons of steel per year.

problems and study goals:

An automatic transportation system utilising automatically guided vehicles (AGV) to transport coils of steel was designed to be employed at the new steel works to transport coils between rolling mills and heat treating facilities (using buffer storage). The main goals of the study were as follows:

• Examine the needed number of AGVs to be used in order to guarantee trouble-free transport of coils.
• Verify proposed crane operating capacity.
• Determine needed storage capacities for coils.
• Create dynamic 3D visualisation of the modelled parts of the steel works, including AGV movement and crane manipulations.

study results:

With the help of detailed microscopic simulation model of the facility operation (built in Villon simulation tool), the required number of AGV was determined and its dependency on the crane movement speed was investigated as well. Designed storage capacities have been proven to be to some extent satisfactory (the required filling grade of storage was slightly exceed), however the model revealed that it is necessary to implement few adjustments to the storage organisation.