THE COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMIC SIMULATION OF SLAB SURFACE SCALE FORMATION DURING REHEATING PROCESS

Reheating furnace is a furnace that using fuel combustion energy to heat steel products before hot rolling. Materials need to reach the temperature around 1400K uniformly after heating in reheating furnaces. Steel oxidizes during the reheating process. Oxidize scale layer on the surface will changed the heat transfer properties of surface and increase the inner stress of material, reducing the quality of the steel. In this study, a model of scale formation under reheating furnace working condition is developed. The model can be coupled into computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The commercial software, ANSYS FLUENT®, was utilized to give a prediction of furnace atmosphere and calculate the formed scale. A calculator is also developed to predict the scale formation of a single point during the reheating process using measurable flow field data. Furthermore, a series of parametric studies has been investigated to study the influence of operating conditions.