Numerical Modeling of Microwave Heating Sysytems

Simulation model for moving food packages in microwave heating processes using conformal FDTD method

“…While Smyth (1990), Barratt and Simons (1992) considered one-and two-dimensional temperature dependent microwave heating processes, detailed treatment of three-dimensional coupled electromagnetic field and heat transfer equations has not been explored until recently. However, even these studies are limited to domestic ovens (Smyth, 1990;Zhang and Datta, 2000) or stationary cases (Bows et al, 1997;Burfoot et al, 1996;Clemens and Saltiel, 1995;Harms et al, 1996;Zhang and Datta, 2000).…”

In‐situ measurements of temperature distributions in a microwave‐heated cavity

“…Considerable effort has been expended in the development of mathematical models of microwave heating processes in 2‐D14 and 3‐D15–18 systems. These studies have shown that microwave absorption is not generally uniform throughout a system, but has a complex spatial distribution depending on the load and geometry, with the heating often concentrated in localized hot spots, or nodes, within the system.…”

FDTD Modeling and Simulation of Microwave Heating of in-Shell Eggs

“…The simulations showed that at some locations the temperature shot up to 110 • C within 100 seconds at a power density of 3 Wg −1 , while other portions of the egg that remained below 30 • C. Comparatively, at lower power densities the temperature gradient was much lesser due to the slower heating rates and greater quantities of heat transfer occurring through conduction. Harms et al (1996) obtained results with good precision but the variability of the validation data was considerably high, leading to 15% error in estimation. As this model involves simultaneous solutions for all the three modes of heat transfer, the error was kept within 10% for all the measured values.…”

“…• Heterogeneity of the egg • Complexity in locating the points of overheating • Remediation of cold spots through specific design alternatives Finite element and Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) are two commonly used methods for solving Maxwell's equation to describe the energy distribution in a complex object or within a multimode cavity, and both methods are capable of simulating power density distribution in a 3-D space [2][3][4][5][6]. The finite element method is suitable for arbitrarily shaped non-homogeneous objects and requires the solution of a sparse matrix which can prove very complicated.…”