TEMPERATURE UNIFORMITY DETERMINATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF DRYING OVENS USING EXPERIMENTALLY VALIDATED CFD ANALYSIS AND GENETIC ALGORITHM

摘要

The present paper discusses experimental and computational studies of the flow and thermal processes in a laboratory drying oven with a natural air circulation to improve temperature uniformity inside the storage chamber. The device is mainly used in the laboratories of the food and chemical industry to store products and samples at a constant, spatially uniform temperature. The actual device has been assessed according to a certification procedure and then numerically simulated on the basis of the mathematical model developed, including all heat transfer modes, temperature-dependent air properties and local heat transfer coefficients on the external walls, etc. In this study, a source of the non-uniformity of the temperature field was identified. As a result, a configuration of the electrical heaters were modified. Furthermore, a shape and location of the modified heaters were optimized using genetic algorithm coupled with CFD computations of the 3-D model of the drying oven.