Abstract: Taking the continuous annealing line in the cold rolling process as the research background, the dynamical mechanism model and state space expression model of the strip tension of the driving roll are proposed by analyzing the mechanism of the stirp tension. By using the tension model, a strip tension control algorithm based on backstepping is designed. The stability of the tension control system is proved by using the Lyapunov function. Simulation experiment results show that the proposed tension control method can control the actual strip tension to track its set-point with the satisfactory performance such as low static and dynamical errors, small overshoot, short regulation time.