Numerical modeling of temperature distribution in a high temperature sintering furnace

The development of new energy management systems for sintering processes with high energy consumption and generally carried out with traditional recipes has become an important research topic nowadays. It has been focused on homogeneous temperature distribution in the furnace used in the sintering process. If the temperature difference is high in the furnace, the internal structure of the materials can show serious changes. In this study, transient numerical design and analysis were carried out from room temperature to 1100 °C. The temperature changes of the samples placed at different locations in the furnace with the dimensions of 1070x1580x1030 mm were numerically investigated as transiently. In numerical studies, room temperature and initial furnace temperature were defined as the initial conditions. The boundary conditions are given as heat flux on the heater surfaces and convection outside the furnace. At the end of numerical solutions, temperature values were found inside the furnace and on the samples transiently. It was showed that the temperature differences between the samples were high that is expected at the beginning, but these differences decreased to about 17 °C in the steady conditions. Unlike the studies in the literature, the condition of the samples in a protected chamber, not under the influence of direct radiation, was examined and it was observed that the temperature differences decreased by up to 2 °C. In the analysis, time-dependent temperature distributions and temperature differences are given comparatively for two different cases.