Three-dimensional Mathematical Modelling Of Circulation And Heat Transfer In Float Glass Furnace

In this paper, a practical 3-dimensional mathematical model of circulation and heat transfer in float glass furnace was formulated. The model consisted of batch melting sub-model and glass flow sub-model. The former sub-model was based on the conservation, principles of energy and mass within each finite zone. The later one employed the continuity equation, momentum equation and energy equation from fluid dynamics. As for the boundary condition of heat transfer on the batch and glass surfaces, a semiemprical model of heat transfer between flame and batch/glass was suggested. This model not only got over the difficulty of complicated computation of heat transfer process in fire chamber, but also avoided the irrationality caused by fixing the temperature distribution on the surfaces.The model equation were solved by using SIMPLEC scheme. By computation examples, it was found that upper glass flow under batch moved towards the furnace bottom and moved towards the center line from both side walls. The influence of furnace temperature were argued according to the computation results. It is shown from above work that the variations of furnace temperature distribution would have strong effects on both the velocity and temperature fields, and all of our results are very useful in industry for the determination of thermal parameters, for the improvements of furnace structure designing and for the selecting of refractory of the furnace.