THERMAL SCIENCE

International Scientific Journal

Likun Yang

,

Fuyong Su

,

Zhi Wen

,

Shuming Tao

,

Guangjie Bai

,

Chunmei Luan

NUMERICAL SIMULATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF STEEL TUBE BILLET HEATING PROCESS IN ROTARY HEARTH FURNACE USING COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

ABSTRACT
Billet reheating is an important part of the steel production process. Since the production process will adopt different tube billet arrangement strategies, and the condition of the furnace hearth will also change due to long-term operation and accumulation of iron oxide scales, these factors will inevitably affect heating efficiency and temperature distribution uniformity of the tube billet, thereby affecting the quality of the final product. In this study, a physical and mathematical model was established for a 48 m diameter rotary hearth furnace of the seamless steel pipe production-line and typical 300 mm diameter tube billets of different lengths. Commercial FLUENT code was used to carry out CFD numerical simulation research on the influence of the aforementioned factors. Optimizing and adjusting strategies under different arrangement strategies were proposed, and the influence of furnace hearth condition change on heating effect was studied. The methods and simulation approach of this paper also have guidance for the billet heating control in similar continuous heating furnaces.
KEYWORDS
Rotary hearth furnace, Tube billet heating, CFD numerical simulation, Arrangement strategy, Distribution angle, Furnace hearth condition
PAPER SUBMITTED: 2022-06-21
PAPER REVISED: 2022-12-29
PAPER ACCEPTED: 2023-01-09
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 2023-04-22
DOI REFERENCE: https://doi.org/10.2298/TSCI220621060Y
CITATION EXPORT: view in browser or download as text file
THERMAL SCIENCE YEAR 2023, VOLUME 27, ISSUE Issue 5, PAGES [4179 - 4192]
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Numerical simulation and optimization of steel tube billet heating process in rotary hearth furnace using computational fluid dynamics

© 2024 Society of Thermal Engineers of Serbia. Published by the Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International licence