Digital twin for combined casting and rolling line control

Aluminum alloys of all kinds are widely used in rocket and other space vehicles construction and operation - in structural elements, communication lines and power supply units. The parameters of alloys processing operations must be strictly maintained in order to exclude de-fects and obtain products of the required quality. Technologies of metal processing in space engineer-ing include such operations as casting, rolling and forming; continuous melt-crystallization-forming lines can also be used, which imposes additional requirements on the integrated control of such a line. The article is focused on the design of a digital twin to be used for controlling a combined casting and rolling complex. Basing on the previously worked-out mathematical models of the units and com-ponents of the complex (furnace, tray, mold, forming unit, rectifying and cooling assembly, spools), a special program has been designed in the TIA Portal software environment using the S7-1200 micro-processor controller, which simulates the parameter changes of both rolled metal and casting and rolling line units. The article also presents the structure and the user interface of the specified pro-gram. There are calculations of the technological cycle parameters for processing of three alloys - that gives an understanding of temperatures and speeds distribution in the rolled metal at each unit of the line. The program can be used for production lines and complexes both in preliminary processing calcu-lations for various alloys (to select the necessary control options) and during the process itself as part of the applied process control system (to confirm the cooling parameters and casting speed).