Providemus Oy was founded in early 2025 to commercialize the Virtual Rolling Mill, developed as a result of university research. The Virtual Rolling Mill can simulate the steel rolling process and predict metallurgical phenomena occurring inside the rolled steel strip — phenomena that cannot be directly measured during the process but significantly impact the final mechanical properties of steel. The simulation also calculates the rolling process parameters required for the actual process.
The academic Proof of Concept for the Virtual Rolling Mill was conducted on SSAB Raahe hot strip mill production line and is fully documented in the doctoral dissertation of Joonas Ilmola, a founding member of Providemus. The doctoral dissertation of another founding member, Oskari Seppälä, will also present the physically based metallurgical models utilized in the Virtual Rolling Mill. After a successful PoC, the first industrial collaboration partner was Outokumpu Stainless Oy Tornio steel plant. The first kick-off project focuses on developing the Virtual Rolling Mill software for the Tornio pilot rolling mill.
The Virtual Rolling Mill simulates the entire hot rolling production process using physically based models. This means that the thermo-mechanical and metallurgical phenomena that occur during steel rolling are modeled based on the laws of physics, or their behavior has been experimentally validated and then converted into a numerical format. Accurately simulating these phenomena in the virtual environment requires the detailed consideration of process boundary conditions during calculations. By modeling both the process boundary conditions and the internal phenomena of the steel strip in a physically-based way, every simulation result can be given a physical explanation — which is crucial for process optimization or for simulating the hot rolling of new and existing steel grades.
Providemus builds a bridge between university research and the steel industry, enabling software development for the Virtual Rolling Mill. In this way, decades of experimental research and expertise from the Materials Engineering research group can be integrated into the digitalization of the steel industry and the virtual rolling of steel. We are constantly working towards phenomenal rolling!
