Steady state model of a reheating furnace for determining slab boundary conditions

The slab reheating process in a reheating furnace is a very energy intensive process with many operating parameters that can be optimized. Numerical methods are therefore applied to generate models which can be used in an optimization strategy. This paper presents the first step in the creation of these models: obtaining the boundary conditions for the slab model from a steady state model of the furnace. The slab heating process itself is a transient phenomenon and an accurate cross-sectional slab temperature cannot be obtained using a steady state model. The furnace however, operates in a narrow range of temperatures and steady state operation is a suitable approximation. The steady state model is calibrated with data from a working reheating furnace at the ArcelorMittal Gent site. The numerical results show a good agreement with the experimental data with an average relative error of 3.1%. This gives confidence in using this model to determine the furnace heating boundary conditions of the slab model which will be implemented in future work