Experimental study of a semi-industrial gas furnace

Project aim

The objectives are:

• Examine the technical literature and establish the current state of the art regarding high-temperature measurement, mathematical modelling and computational solution of heat treatment furnaces
• Evaluate the most important flow and thermal physics that need to be understood to satisfactorily control heat treatment processes
• Validate a mathematical model able to scale from a small scale pilot furnace to industrial sizes

Project background

The heat treatment process involves typically 3 steps: heating at a specified rate (°C/s), soaking at a specific temperature for a defined period and cooling at a specified rate (°C/s). During these stages, metallurgical transformations occur, which modify the mechanical properties of the produced component. Even though knowledge of material science is well established, questions still remain on the effect and control of heat treatment processes at the industrial scale. Indeed, the production of heat-treated parts is currently achieved through large industrial gas furnaces using empirical-based guidelines.

However, the temperature control desired by metallurgical requirements is challenging with temperature tolerances of the order of 10 oC on temperatures of 1000oC which have largely been not achievable in industrial-scale furnaces. To improve this situation a better understanding of the furnace heat transfer processes are required and it is believed that this can be achieved through computational fluid dynamic modelling approaches.