Optimal investigation of the reheating furnace based on a 3D numerical model with the formation of both oxide scale layer and skid marks

The performance of reheating furnace is highly dependent on the slab temperatures which further determine energy consumption. In general, the oxide scale layer and skid marks have a huge impact on the temperature distributions of the slab. Thus, an optimal control problem with a 3-dimensional (3D) numerical model is proposed to reduce the generation of skid marks, oxide scale layer and energy losses for the reheating furnace. Firstly, a 3D numerical Partial Difference Equation (PDE) model is built by considering the formation of the oxide scale layer and skid marks. The proposed model is implied by the parallel implementation strategy of GPU to reduce the computational time. Secondly, the 3D PDE-constrained optimal control problem is developed for the reheating furnace and solved by the proposed modified conjugate gradient (MCG) method. Finally, the accuracy of the proposed 3D model is verified by the industry measurement data, and the fast convergence performance of the MCG method is also validated. This work can significantly reduce the generation of oxide scale layer and energy consumption.

Automated summary

This paper proposes an optimization control problem to reduce the generation of skid marks, oxide scale layer, and energy losses in the reheating furnace by building a 3D numerical model and applying the modified conjugate gradient method.