It is well known that the production of hot coils in uniform thickness depends on various process parameters such as the material, the

number of rolling stages, the reduction ratio of the thickness, the rolling speed, the front and back tensions, the friction between the material

and rolls, the rolling temperature, and the rolling force at each stage of rolling. In the present study, the effect of front and back tensions on

reducing the thickness deviations of hot rolled steel strips were investigated by developing a fuzzy control algorithm. In order to derive the

fuzzy control rules, rigid±viscoplastic ® nite element simulations were carried out using the material property determined from the

production data.