Heat Transfer & Thermal Stress Analysis of RH Refinement Furnace Design

by Terry Y.-F. Chen, Yi-Sheng Liao, Ming-Tzer Lin

Publisher - National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, Republic of China. China Steel Corporation, Taiwan, Republic of China.

Category - Engineering & IT

Steel industry is one of the most important manufacturing processes in the world. In electrical furnace steel making process, one of the essential equipment is the RH refining furnace. The design and development of fine RH refining furnacesignificantly affect the efficiency of the steel making process. In general, RHrefining furnace is a high-flow disturbance and high temperature environment system. The liquid steel entering into the furnace through the inlet tube driven by the vacuum pressure to makes liquid steel going up, in outlet tube the liquid steel is reflux down to circulate. During the refinement process, it produces high shear stress on the structure. In addition, the liquid steel temperatures is reached 1600 ℃ and could potentially cause thermal stress inside the structure. This study uses computational method for the fluid simulation as well as analysis of thermal stress on the critical components of RH refining furnace. According to the process efficiency of RH refining furnace, various designs of RH refining furnaces were develop and three-dimensional computational models were conducted. Based on the simulation results, the optimize RH refining furnace design is presented and discussed.

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