Thermal Analysis of a High Frequency Induction Coil for a Casting Furnace

Induction heating is used for various applications of the industrial manufacturing process such as heat treating, welding, and melting. It is a complex process of coupling the electromagnetic and thermal phenomena, where eddy currents are generated with the conducting material and work as a source of Joule heating in the subject. We used a commercial analysis program, OPERA 3D, for solving this thermal problem. The induction furnace was consisted of induction coils, a graphite crucible, an insulator, a melting material, and a chamber. The coils generally have a cooling system to prevent damage in the coils against a high temperature generated by the system. In this study, we have developed algorithms using conduction, a natural convection, an induction heating and experimental data in order to predict the maximum temperature of the coils, which have no any cooling systems when the graphite crucible achieved at 1500 .deg. C. Temperature distributions in the induction furnace were calculated through this, during the melting