Design of induction heating lines using ELTA program

Overview & Synopsis

Long induction heating lines are widely used in metallurgical, forging and tube industries. Big length and large number of inductors in one line, make optimal design of these systems rather complicated especially when the heating inductors are connected in series and parallel groups supplied from different power sources. Typically solid or tubular products with square or round cross-sections are being heated in lines. In some installations individual inductors or groups of inductors are supplied from the sources with different frequencies. This presentation is devoted to design of such systems using program ELTA 6.0. ELTA is a program based on 1D Finite Difference Method (FDM) with semi-analytical account for the lengths of individual inductors and loads. Version 6.0 has an important 2D option for heating of bodies with rectangular cross-sections in the longitudinal magnetic field. All FDM calculations are related to a certain cross-section of the load, which passes through the processing steps in function of time. This algorithm allows the user to simulate multi-step heating processes in one “shot” and is very convenient for simulation of the induction lines with any number of stages describing heating in individual inductors, cooling in the gaps between them and even heating or holding in a flame or electric furnace. Description of the computer assisted design of induction lines is illustrated by several examples. Due to very fast simulation it is easy to optimize the process of heating, i.e. to find an optimal variation of frequency and specific power versus time and therefore along the heating line.