Operation Control of Melting Furnaces in Foundry Workshops Using Simulation Models

A modern foundry workshop is a complex dynamic system, the functioning of which is determined by the stochastic nature of the interaction of various equipment and its structure. Existing methods for calculating melting furnaces have shown that the largest share of downtime of automatic molding lines, 30–60% of their total number, is downtime due to the lack of metal and molding sand. The purpose of the work is to develop a methodology for controlling the operation of melting furnaces in foundry workshops using simulation models. The process of modeling a melting system includes: calculating the number of furnaces to complete the production program, the schedule for turning on the furnaces, the stages from loading the charge into the furnace to pouring the metal into molds on the pouring section of the foundry conveyor. When modeling the technological process, the reliability of equipment operation is taken into account. A method for controlling the operation of a melting system has been implemented for a steel casting shop. The results showed its high efficiency. It allows you to check the correctness of the calculation of the operation of melting and auxiliary equipment for a predetermined period of time, as well as the rational organization of the system’s operation, obtain high-quality castings in the required quantity, identify its “bottlenecks”, downtime, etc.