On December 15, 2025, a scientific and technological achievement evaluation meeting, co-organized by the China Iron & Steel Association and China MCC, was held at CERI. Recognized by the evaluation expert committee, the overall technology of Technology Development and Application of 5600mm Ultra-wide and Heavy Plate Rolling Mill developed by Capital Engineering & Research Incorporation Limited (hereinafter referred to as CERI) has reached the internationally leading level, while the achievement Key Technologies and Application of High-precision Rolling Process Monitoring and Intelligent Control for Medium and Heavy Plates has reached the internationally advanced level as a whole. This marks a critical breakthrough in China’s high-end wide and heavy plate rolling technology and a new height in independent innovation capacity, which is of strategic significance for strengthening China’s independent supply capacity of high-end steel materials and advancing the implementation of the manufacturing powerhouse strategy.

The meeting adopted a combined offline and online format. The evaluation expert committee, led by Academician Wang Guodong from Northeastern University, brought together 9 authoritative experts including Professor Liu Hongmin from Yanshan University and Sun Yanguang, Vice President of the Automation Research and Design Institute of Metallurgical Industry, covering core fields such as materials science, mechanical engineering and metallurgical automation. As the core highlights of this evaluation, the two technological achievements provide key support for the high-end transformation of the iron and steel industry from the two dimensions of independent equipment development and intelligent control respectively. 

The achievement Technology Development and Application of 5600mm Ultra-wide and Heavy Plate Rolling Mill adopts a whole-process model of "domestic design + domestic manufacturing", and has successfully developed the world’s first 5600mm ultra-wide and heavy plate rolling mill with four core strengths: the widest rolled product range, the largest rolling force capacity, the highest rolling mill stiffness, and the highest precision in plate thickness and plate crown, with multiple core indicators setting new industry records. By optimizing the housing, roll system dimensions and profiles, as well as the stiffness and mass distribution of the main drive system, the team developed optimized design technologies for rolling mill stiffness and main drive systems, improving the control accuracy of plate thickness and plate crown as well as the stability of the rolling system. Innovative processes such as double-layer blocking casting were developed to manufacture super-large housings with a column cross-sectional area of over 1.1m² and a total weight of 425 tons, which enhance impact resistance, wear resistance and corrosion resistance and extend the precision service life of the rolling mill. Key technologies such as reverse segregation control were developed as a breakthrough, enabling the production of super-large supporting roll with specifications of Φ2400mm × 5450mm. A high-precision, high-speed AGC system matched with core equipment such as multi-guide roll bending was developed to improve plate thickness control accuracy, extend equipment service life, and boost production efficiency and safety. The achievement has obtained 13 authorized invention patents and has been successfully applied to Henan Angang Zhoukou Iron and Steel, delivering remarkable economic and social benefits and demonstrating the solid strength of Chinese manufacturing. 

The achievement Key Technologies and Application of High-precision Rolling Process Monitoring and Intelligent Control for Medium and Heavy Plates targets industry pain points including complex working conditions in medium and heavy plate rolling, difficult detection of quality abnormalities, coupling of multi-parameter control, and insufficient thickness accuracy. It has built a whole-process intelligent technology system, and innovatively developed panoramic monitoring based on dynamic working condition perception and common-individual feature diagnosis technology, greatly improving working condition identification and fault prediction capabilities. A dynamic evaluation technology driven by qualitative and quantitative information was developed, combined with a thickness self-correction model based on random forest algorithm and a plate shape optimization model integrating deep learning and crown mechanism, to solve the challenge of multi-objective control coordination. Breakthroughs have been made in new AGC algorithms and fault root cause diagnosis technologies, forming a fault-tolerant control strategy for abnormal working conditions, and stably controlling the thickness difference within the same plate for steel plates below 20mm to a micron-level precision of ±0.1mm. The achievement has cumulatively obtained 12 authorized invention patents, 1 released group standard, 5 registered software copyrights and 26 published academic papers. It has been successfully applied in enterprises such as NISCO, Jiujiang PXSTEEL and Baosteel Zhanjiang, combining both technological innovation and engineering practicality.