CFD modeling of an industrial continuous bread-baking process involving U-movement

In an industrial continuous bread-baking oven, dough/bread is travelling inside the oven chamber on its top and bottom tracks connected by a U-turn. The temperature profile of dough/bread during this whole travelling period, which depends on the distribution of temperature and air flow in the oven chamber, dominates the final product quality. In this study, a two-dimensional (2D) CFD model for the whole baking oven chamber has been developed to facilitate a better understanding of the baking process. The transient simulation of the continuous movement of dough/bread in the oven was achieved using the sliding mesh technique. The U-turn movement of bread was successfully simulated by dividing the solution domain into two parts, then flipping and aligning them along the travelling tracks. The 2D CFD modelling was proven to be a useful approach to study the unsteady heat transfer in the oven as well as the heating history and temperature distribution within dough/bread.