Numerical and experimental study of electromagnetic induction heating process for bolted flange joints

Abstract

As a promising metalwork processing technology, electromagnetic induction heating (EMIH) method has been applied in dealing with bolted flange joints in turbomachinery. In this study, a 3-D finite element model of electromagnetic induction heating system for the bolted flange joint is established, and the specific governing equations are derived based on Maxwell’s principle. The alternately-coupled magneto-thermal analysis is carried out considering temperature-dependent material properties to obtain the temperature distribution, followed with the uncoupled thermal-mechanical analysis to acquire the axial stress and deformation in EMIH process. The magnetic induction intensity mainly concentrates at the inner wall region, attenuates seriously along the radial direction, and reduces to almost zero at the outer wall. Due to the skin effect, the heat transfers radially and axially outward, indicating a diamondlike-shaped development from the center to the surrounding region. The axial stress with and without initial pretension are also discussed respectively. Then the corresponding experiments are introduced and carried out to validate the reliability of numerical simulation results. By comparing the results of the center point of inner surface and outer surface, the numerical simulation is proved reliable with a 5∼10% reasonable deviation. Further, the induction heating process has been improved through the optimization method based on pattern search algorithm. By adopting the stepped input current density optimized in the study, the optimal thermal stress tends to be constant and the final heating time reduces by 20.5% in the safe range of stress.

Numerical study on thermal-electrical-mechanical coupling mechanism of electrical connectors considering contact resistance

“…The research methods of multi-physical field coupling primarily include experiment, 6,7 and simulation approaches. 8,9 With the rapid development of 1 School of Mechanical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China 2 computer technology in the past several decades, numerical methods (e.g. finite element method (FEM), 10,11 boundary element method (BEM), 12 finite volume method (FVM) 13 and finite difference method (FDM) 14 ) have become popular in the numerical simulation.…”