Study On Thermal-mechanical Coupled Deformation In Aluminum Reduction Cell With Cooling Plate

With the rapid development of computer science and widely use of commercial finite element software in the past two decades, computational simulation has already been employed in Electrolyte Alumina Container design, production, repair and other related whole-life period. With the development of aluminum electrolytic technology, implementation of the scientific outlook on development to save energy, and lower energy consumption becomes the main direction. With the enlargement of the container size, the safety problem becomes more and more intensive.During the life-cycle of a large Electrolyte Alumina Container, aside from the mechanical load on it, the container is on 900 centigrade thermal pressure. The container is under thermal-mechanical coupling and creep is the key factor affecting its life period. Adopting design of ventilation and heat conduct to reduce the temperature of the inner shell, especially to ameliorate the reasonable distribution of thermal stress in the shell, is a very good manner to increase the safe life of the container. In this paper, computational analysis of a large Electrolyte Alumina Container is performed. Special attention is paid to preliminary study of the temperature and thermal stress distribution of the shell of the container. Conclusion of the data from this analysis may be useful for the future research on the heat dissipation of Electrolyte Alumina Container.Content of this paper:Firstly, 3D finite element model of an Electrolyte Alumina Container based on ANSYS is constructed. Adopting the attached language APDL by ANSYS, calculation model of the whole container with inner-attached material is constructed. All possible contacts, material non-linear properties and heat-venting boundaries are taken into account.Secondly, by ANSYS, analysis of the Electrolyte Alumina Container under normal and loading conditions are performed and comparison of the container on and off cooling plate is done. The comparison of the analysis of the container on and off cooling plate is performed, with special attention to those parameters related to cooling plate, the material, thickness, surface area, number of the cooling plate and the distribution of those cooling plates, which have great impact to the stress and its distribution in the container. Results show that (1) addition of certain quantity of cooling plates can effectively low down the temperature in the container and at the same time reduce the thermal stress induced by inner displacement in a way; (2) optimization design of cooling plates distribution and its number can help improve temperature distribution in the container and reduce the cost as well.