A computational simulation approach to study gas temperature and flow patterns in a walking-beam type reheating furnace

Slab or plate reheating is the primary and one of the important steps in the hot rolling or forging operation. The experimental investigation on a real scale reheating furnace is often not possible due to high operating temperature and high testing costs. Therefore, for the process design and optimization of high temperature applications, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has more importance in recent years. In industrial heating furnaces, hot spots and thermal distortion has been observed due to the non-uniform temperature distribution in the furnace interior and uneven or jerky flow patterns of the combustion gases. The scope of this research work is to simulate the plate or slab reheating furnace to understand temperature distribution and flow patterns. In this research article, we have performed computational (CFD) simulation for a real scale reheating furnace in 2D and validated and compared with published research work. The simulation probe predicts the furnace interior gas temperature and flow patterns and it is observed that simulation results agree reasonably well with the existing literature model values. The reheating type-Walking beam furnace simulation is performed using the commercial software FLUENT.