A Numerical Analysis of Heat Transfer in Bright Annealing Furnace of Stainless Steel Strip

Strainless steel strip 광휘어닐링로 내의 열전달 해석

In order to predict the temperature distribution of stainless steel strip in Bright Annealing (BA) furnace, we performed the analysis of heat transfer and fluid flow using STAR-CCM+. The analysis model included unsteady fluid flow, heat transfer with radiation and moving grid. Two kinds of radiative properties, emissivity and reflectivity, were applied to the stainless steel strip, one is constant and the other is variable with time. As we call, the BA furnaces of stainless steel strip have two different types, muffle and no-muffle. The using of muffle type has been faced with some problems such as rising in material price and shortening of life cycle, etc. So the development of no-muffle type BA furnace is very important in order to save energy cost, lower environmental load and increase the productivity. The designed (or expected) temperature of stainless steel strip coming out of BA furnace was about $1065^{\circ}C$ while the environment temperature maintains around $1100^{\circ}C$. The result of our calculation was very close (or similar) to design temperature, and the application of radiative properties variable with time produced more accurate result than applying constant ones.