Fluid flow and convective heat transfer in the gas phase, are computed by solving the classical conservation equations for mass, momentum and energy. Radiative heat transfer is determined by a specially developed multiflux model based on a cell technique. In the fixed solid phase, the conductive heat transfer is calculated by solving the non steady conduction equation. The free zone is easier to handle numerically. The classical continuum approach, based on the Navier-Stokes equations, is used.
Radiation is calculated by the standard multiflux model.
The bricks are piled up in two stacks. Because of the relatively large numbers of burners, many vortices are induced in the furnace core. The next figure shows the quantitative evolution of different temperatures, namely, the mean gas temperature, the mean load temperature and the mean skin temperature. The last figure shows the evolution of the standard deviation of temperature which constitutes a good criteria to evaluate the temperature homogeneity in the furnace and specially in the load. Obviously, this latter should be as low as possible to achieve a good temperature uniformity and hence a higher quality.