How to go about simulating the process of heating a metal inside a furnace? Are all 3 modes of heat transfer to be considered? There is no combustion taking place. It will be a transient problem where the metal gets heated inside the furnace and I want to monitor the core temperature of the metal.

Thanks, CFDguy

Hi,

Whenever the temperature goes beyond 1000 C raditaion heat transfer becomes significant. What will be important is to specify the emmisivity of the inner furnace walls and metal surface.

You do not need to model the thickness of furnace walls. You can specify the same in the wall boundary conditions. Get proper values of conductivity of the furnace walls. Specify external temperature and heat transfer coefficient/ heat loss/constant temperature for furnace walls.

Model the metal thickness only if you want to get the temperature variation along the thickness. What is the mode of heating?

Regards, Ant

Thanks Ant. The heat transfer into the metal piece takes place by conduction, convection and radiation. Since the wall temperature of this metal piece will increase with time, I guess UDF needs to be used for this transient BC?(for proper modeling of conduction) The same would apply for convection as well - transient HTC? How significant would convection be considering this is a small furnace with negligible air flow? Mode of heating is electric, I hope I understood your question.

Thanks again, CFDguy