Toward the achievement of vision 2020 goals of the heat treating industry

To achieve the goals of the 2020 vision of the heat treating industry (reducing the process time by 50%, the production cost by 75% and the energy consumption by 80%) a numerical multi-mode heat transfer model (software) that can be used for design and optimization of a horizontally loaded (single-layer) batch furnaces operation was previously developed and validated. This model has been enhanced to account for multi-layer (vertical) loading. In addition, the thermophysical material/atmospheric properties database has been extensively extended. Experiments carried out to validate the model showed a maximum difference of 12% between the enhanced-model prediction and the measured temperatures. This paper presents the capability of the enhanced model on being used as design and optimization tool to achieve the 2020 vision goals.