Physical Simulation Of Glass Fluid Flow In Furnace And Fluidized Study Near Waist

Float glass is a significant, widely used industrial production, since the developmentin the more than half of a century, the technology has raised to a new level, but the glassproduction still has a lot of energy consumption. As the global energy increasing in shortsupply, mastering the law of the glass flow in the furnace and then reducing the energyconsumption, have become problems must be solved quickly. As the high temperature andthe enclosed environment，it’s hardly to observe the glass fluid in the furnace, so thesimulation method has become the effective observation tool to study the glass fluid flowmechanism in the glass furnace.The physical simulation is an important tool to study glass furnace. Theory ofsimilitude is the theoretical basis to guide building a physical model. But it is limited bythe number of similarity criteria selection and the specific implementation difficulties, it isdifficult to know how matching of the physical model and physical glass furnace. In viewof this situation, this work presents a new idea of building the physical model: Based onsimilar guidelines, using computer simulation of physical models by Fluent software. Bychanging the model size, the viscosity of fluid and the inlet velocity to adjust and optimizethe physical model.Through the analysis, we know that, when the actual furnace and the physical modelin the long, wide, high direction size for30:1,30:1,6:1, the viscosity of the fluid of200Pa s, the inlet velocity of5×10-6m/s, the physical model and the actual furnace matcha higher degree of similarity. Finally, by matching the similarity criteria of guiding theconstruction of glass melting furnace proposed in the literature [46], the results areconsistent.The simulation of the float glass liquid flowing in the waist nearby is used by thenumerical simulation, studies has found that: the glass fluid around the waist has forwardand back flow from top to bottom in the height direction, this is matching well with thestripes in the waist constructed by the glass flow, the stripes were taken photos when theglass furnace is cold repairing; the glass fluid in the right angle construction near the waist flows very slowly, has became the dead section; a part of the second cycle glass flow intoa lot of cycles before flowing out of the furnace, this is not only increasing the energyconsumption, but also may stirring the glass in the bottom of the furnace, mixing it withthe fresh glass. At the same time, by using the physical model of the float glass furnace,reproducing the state of the glass flow in the waist nearby, match well with the result ofthe numerical simulation.