Progress in Plasma Processing of Materials, 1999

ISBN Print: 1-56700-126-2

3-D NUMERICAL MODELING OF AN ANODIC METAL BATH HEATED WITH A TRANSFERRED ARC

DOI: 10.1615/ITPPC-1998.310
pages 203-208

Resumo

This work follows previous 2-D calculations performed in the frame of the thesis of Trenty in 1997 and corresponds to a 3-D modeling of a metallic bath heating with a transferred arc using "ESTET", EDF finite volumes code. The computational tests are based on a pilot furnace of 200kW, 2000A and 300kg of iron on which an experimental study is in progress. The 3-D model considers turbulent or laminar flows, temperature and electromagnetic fields calculated both in the arc and the bath. In the arc chamber, the influence of the iron vapour on the plasma properties is taken into account. A new finite volumes radiative transfer discretization have been implemented in ESTET. The calculations are presented in a frame of a grey gas assumption. A onedimensional subgrid model is used to describe the anodic layer on the bath surface. Concerning the bath domain, both the solid and liquid regions are treated. Arc and bath domains are computed separately and linked by a coupling procedure using the freeware PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine). This paper presents the first 3-D results obtained with ESTET, with an emphasize on the particularities of 3-D calculations and differences with the previous 2-D modeling.