Simulation Analysis Of The Whole Fluid Flow Characteristics And The Local Disturbance Mechanism In The Float Glass Furnace

Currently, in the solution of the process of the large-scale melting of glass, due to the particularity of the glass liquid with high viscosity, low velocity, type of furnace as well as auxiliary facilities under the condition of high temperature, using conventional methods are difficult to achieve the glass fluid flow characteristics analysis in the furnace. There are many scientific issues which are not yet clear need to be explored.In this paper, the engineering simulation is adopted, and the molten glass in melting furnace is taken as study object. the disturbance caused by the thermal temperature difference at the bottom of the working chamber, and the distribution of different flow layer caused by the change of Fe content in the glass raw materials are analyzed respectively, and applying the stripe images as the means of verification. On this basis, the integral analysis of fluid flow trends about liquid flow in the furnace is processed, and the corresponding relations between glass liquid in furnace and different positions of stripe images are provided.In this work, the Fluent Module in the software of ANSYS 14.5 is adopted for the engineering simulation about the flow condition of glass flow in the furnace, and the post processing CFD-Post is adopted for extracting and calculating the results, as well as employing float glass stripe image equipment with the model of YTF-2015 T to collect side stripe images for compared and verified the simulation results.The results indicate that the main fluid flow’s allocation in the furnace can be influenced when the temperature differences exist at the bottom of the furnace working chamber. By calculating, the critical value of the temperature difference at the two sides of the bottom of the working chamber was discovered, and when the temperature differences is higher than the critical value, transverse flow of the glass fluid will generate and the uniformity of molten glass will worse severe, that is, the phenomenon of thermal inhomogeneity is happening. The heat permeability of the molten glass in the furnace will be reduced correspondingly, when the content of Fe in glass raw materials is increase, and will result in the higher temperature at the surface layer and lower temperature at the bottom layer of the molten glass, the surface flow rate increased and the thickness of the forming flow of the glass become shallow. The verifying research on the content of Fe changes in a glass preduction line indicated that, with the increase of Fe content in the raw materials, stirring speed should be increased appropriately and the stirring depth should be decreased, in order to ensure the uniformity of the liquid glass. By using the mode of Particle Tracking, the flow trends of furnace’s whole liquid flow in normal condition are analyzed and the relationship between stripe image and the glass flow regularity in the furnace is established, as well as, the glass distribution trend of homogeneity at the exit position of the furnace is analysised. It is shown that there are consistencies between the results of homogeneity analysis trend and stripe images.The application of this research has been verified in the diagnosis and elimination of the quality problems in the actual glass production process, which provides a scientific basis for keeping homogenization and stabilization of the molten glass fluid flow in the furnace and producing high quality glass products.