Modeling of Strip Heating Process in Vertical Continuous Annealing Furnace

The mechanism for heat transfer of radiation is usually adopted to heat strip in vertical continuous annealing furnace. The rate of heat transfer among strip and other objects can be hugely affected by the parameters of strip speed, geometry factors and radiating characteristic of surfaces of strip, radiating tubes and walls of furnace. A model including all parameters is proposed for calculating the heat transfer coefficient, predicting the strip temperature and boundary temperature of strip through analyzing these parameters. The boundary temperature is a important datum and different from average arithmetic value of temperature of strip and temperature in furnace. Also, the model can be used to analyze the relation for temperature of strip and heat transfer coefficient, total heat transfer quantity and heating time. The model is built by using the radiating heat transfer rate, the Newton's law of cooling, and lumped system analysis. The results of calculation are compared to the data from production line. The comparisons indicate that the model can well predict the heating process. The model is already applied for process control in production line. Also, this research will provide a new method for analyzing the radiation heat transfer.