A Multi-Objective Evolutionary Machine Learning Method for the Yield Strength Prediction of Strip Steel in Continuous Annealing

In the continuous annealing process, the yield strength is the key property index to evaluate the quality of strip steel and guide the production. It is difficult to perform online quality measurement for numerous products in the steel industry, this brings significant challenges for process monitoring and operation optimization. In this paper, a multi-objective evolutionary machine learning method is proposed for the yield strength prediction of strip steel in continuous annealing. First, the factors affecting the yield strength of strip steel are analyzed and the prediction model based on a hybrid kernel support vector regression (HKSVR) is established. To improve the prediction accuracy, a multi-objective evolutionary optimization algorithm with a knee solution strategy is used to optimize the key parameters of the HKSVR. It is verified by the actual production data that the proposed method has high prediction accuracy and can meet the actual production demand. Moreover, the proposed method can help practitioners to construct quality analytics models for many other similar production lines, providing assurance for quality control and optimization with a good generalization.