Unsteady-state lumped heat capacity system design for tube furnace for continuous inline wire annealing process

摘要

A continuous annealing furnace is developed, which incorporates the principle of electric resistance heating for obtaining the desired temperature in the furnace. The concept of lumped heat capacity system is applied for the determination of annealing time of a continuously moving wire through the refractory tube. Also, the heat transfer inside the system and heat losses to the atmosphere are considered using the principles of conduction, convection, and radiation. The parameters related to the dynamics of moving wire are also designed. The designed furnace is fabricated and tested for its working, the observations of which show that 30 minutes are required to reach about 400°C furnace temperature and 30 seconds for annealing 1 m length of wire. The morphological testing of annealed and nonannealed wire is done to study the microstructure, which shows more traces of pearlite in annealed wires than in nonannealed wires. Thus, continuous annealing furnaces are more effective for inline annealing of wires; so as to relieve the internal stresses, induced by the step cold rolling process.